It’s no secret that there’s a mess of cables behind your television and your computer station at home. Between your power strip surge protector, the USB cables, and four different types of HDMI cables, it’s hard to know where one cable ends and the others begin! Not to mention it can make a room feel sloppy and disorganized.

Are you ready to learn how to tame that mess of bulk Cat6 cables without wasting an entire weekend? Here are a few things you can do.

Save Those Bread Tags
The plastic tags found on bread bags are so much more than a simple means of keeping your bread from going stale. If you need to keep track of your cables, look no further than these little gadgets! Simply take a marker and use them as labels. The small holes in the plastic tags make for easy placement right on your cables so you always know which plug not to pull.

Got Paper Towels?
If your cables are already pretty organized and you’re just looking for some storage, step back into the kitchen. You know those old paper towel rolls you’ve been throwing away? Turns out you can use them to store bulk Cat6 cables and any number of other cables lurking about in odd drawers here and there. All you need to do is coil your cable and thread it through a paper towel holder. Better yet, you can use that same market from earlier and label your rolls to keep track of each cable as it’s stored.

When in Doubt, use products designed for the task
If you’re not the crafty type or keeping old cardboard tubes just isn’t your thing, there are plenty of products designed to make managing and organizing your cables simple. Spiral cable wraps are great under the desk or behind the entertainment center. They are able to contain cables and can be cut to the necessary length. Depending on the area you are organizing you may find hook and loop straps or nylon clamps useful for securing the spiral wrapped cables. And, for those runs in open space, you might give a thought to cable raceways.