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Some people have a junk drawer. Some people have a shoebox of memories. But not me. I have a Ball of Wires.
The Ball spends its days overflowing a 31-gallon plastic tub. It contains my collection of audio/video, computer, and telephone cables, assembled over a decade of roaming the US, connecting things to other things. The Ball is hopelessly tangled — it takes a good ten minutes to disentangle any given cable you want from the Ball — assuming you can find it in the first place. I’m constantly removing cables from the Ball, but somehow it continues to gain mass and needs semi-annual upgrades into ever-larger plastic tubs.
Witness more details of my secret messiness after the jump.
Embedded in the Ball are: several obsolete cell phones, a TI graphing calculator from high school, an impressive array of SCSI cables from old Macs, several dozen RCA/RCA-to-1/4″ audio cables, many hundreds of dollars of microphone cables, power cables, USB cables (several flavors), serial cables (Mac and PC), one parallel (printer) cable from a failed PC project, an answering machine, a metal music stand (in two pieces for easy storage), a USB hub from 1998, an assortment of telephone and Ethernet cords, a collection of torx wrenches, an anti-static wrist strap kit, an assortment of WiFi antennas, a Nintendo 64 controller (there used to be two, but one is out on permanent loan), several power strips, several computer mice, several 9-volt wall warts (many now hopelessly disassociated from their appliances of origin), and…well, you get it.
My new visitor, Emma the cat, likes the Ball of Wires. It’s chewy. Mostly I keep it under wraps (safely crammed in its host container), as it represents a sort of immense to-do item that may never get done. I bet if I spent a day disentangling, I could sort these all out. But how boring would that be? And wouldn’t that destroy a handy metaphor?
A friend recently saw the Ball and suggested a good joke: “Just tell people you went wireless.”
So what’s your secret Ball of Wires? Do you have any special bits of clutter hiding in your home? Do you have any plans to deal with them?
Comments (23)
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Haha… I see an N64 controller in there.
I’ve got a box that keeps filling up with doodads. I find a little (usually pointless) item and must hold on to it.
posted by Jonathan on 7-20-2007 at 7:41 am
Haha, we totally have our own one of these, except that it now takes up two boxes and three bags… Half of it is audio wires that I have no idea what they are for but they were no doubt expensive and if I threw them out they would be required right the next day…despite not having been touched for at least two years…sigh!
posted by Jo-less on 7-20-2007 at 8:02 am
I have a sock drawer. Back when I was gainfully employed (before my kid was born), I had to wear socks that matched one another. So I had lots of them. Every color, dozens of styles, and lots and lots of designs. Oddly, a lot of my socks have cats on them.
It’s been roughly a year since I’ve had to work, yet the sock drawer is still chock-full of weird socks that I might never wear again. Oh, and they’re not mated. They’re free-range, so finding a pair that match each other is like that duck pond game at the county fair.
posted by Rachel on 7-20-2007 at 8:37 am
I have a drawer that I keep stuff in, but it’s not really a junk drawer. It’s more of a drawer where I keep stuff I know I’m going to need in the future but I can’t use now. The only problem with this drawer is stuff disappears from it. My prime example is that when I got my new cell phone it came with an extra battery and charger. My battery recently died so I went to my drawer to find the extra. I ended up dumping the whole thing out; my battery was not in there. The charger was but not the battery. I have a feeling that this kind of an odd inevitability with anything where you keep a lot of random stuff.
posted by Sally on 7-20-2007 at 9:04 am
I used to have one of these, but I’ve moved so much I don’t have enough time to store stuff any more!
In the other hand, we have worse cable messes when we do tours. Check the Peter Gabriel Up DVD and see the cable jumble in our dimmer racks…thats a scary one.
posted by Ignacio Rosenberg on 7-20-2007 at 9:10 am
Broken or otherwise useless jewelry. I have a shoebox full of tangled necklaces, and another of lonely earrings.
posted by natlynn on 7-20-2007 at 9:44 am
we, too, have a box of wires…not so much a ball, per se…each wire is wrapped and rubberbanded (by my ADD husband) but lemme tell ya, when you need a coax cable, surge protector, phone cable, or whatever – we’ve got it…who needs to go to the store anymore??
posted by donner on 7-20-2007 at 10:20 am
Maybe the borrowed cat could work on untangling those wires for you!
posted by Miss Cellania on 7-20-2007 at 10:53 am
That reminds me — can I borrow Katamari Damacy again sometime?
[here's where I'd put a link to a picture of the prince rolling his ball]
posted by Mary on 7-20-2007 at 11:06 am
I think you must’ve stolen my secret junk box of computer wires! I’m going to check on my hidden obsolete container of PC parts, and it better be there…
posted by Jon on 7-20-2007 at 1:33 pm
Oh, the shame. I have a closet full of plastic shopping bags. I can’t throw them out, because they must be recycled, but I never think to take them to the store with me. Maybe when they start to creep out of the closet…
posted by cousin on 7-20-2007 at 1:50 pm
I have a box full of paperclips that I have bent into interesting shapes, rendering them pretty much useless. But pretty! I believe there’s a striped one, too…
I also have a box full of elementary school art projects. Mostly misshapen pottery things, but a few weird paintings too.
posted by Rosalie on 7-20-2007 at 1:55 pm
When I travel somewhere, I like to collect what I call “free souvenirs”–receipts, fliers handed out on the street, bags from museum gift shops, brochures, free magazines, hotel toiletries–basically anything that reminds me of my vacation without costing me any extra money. I always think that I’ll go through them when I get home and get rid of the silly ones that I don’t need or the repeats, but so far I’ve ended up just keeping them all together in some sort of container.
There’s the Montreal Box on my bookshelf (which includes an interesting Dr. Pepper bottle and a bunch of crazy stuff found in the subway) and the Madrid Bag on a shelf in my closet (the Madrid Bag contains a surprising amount of shopping bags and a teeny bottle of mostaza [mustard]), among others. My intention is to at least be able to show these souvenir chests to friends when they come over, but nobody seems that interested in seeing the a bag from the gift shop at the Prado…
posted by Cynthia on 7-20-2007 at 2:07 pm
Cousin – uh oh, I have two cabinets full of plastic shopping bags too. How can I NEVER EVER remember to bring these to the recycling bin at the store??
posted by Higgins on 7-20-2007 at 2:54 pm
I have a paper scrap drawer. It contains scraps of paper that I’ve written notes onto, ticket stubs, flyers, printouts, etc. I think when I get home I’ll shred it and dump it in the recycle bin (and probably start over again).
posted by Jason! on 7-20-2007 at 4:20 pm
I have one of those drawers where all the someday-it’ll-come-in-handy stuff is. Just the other day I was looking for the phone charger and noticed the nail clippers I’d been looking for for a month. There too was the bag holding my elastic band collection that I needed just yesterday. No phone charger. Wow. Look, there’s the checkbook! This morning I was looking for the nail clippers I saw the other day and I ran across the tweezers, one earring, a roll of electrical tape, three pennies and the pencils I’ve been searching for but no nail clippers. I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that these miscellaneous collections swirl around in there at night, create a molecular vortex of time and space, and shoot out cosmic rays that attract pesky mischief-makers. These merry little people delight in anticipating the exact thing you’re looking for that day and casting a spell of invisibility on it, all the while revealing the LAST things you needed that they hid from sight when you needed them most.
posted by Brave on 7-20-2007 at 11:17 pm
My secret Ball of Wires? I’ve got a couple of boxes that look like yours, only a little more organized now after going through them recently. But I’ve got a 10×10 room in my basement that is chock full of unfinished projects, old Mac & PC hardware, wood scraps from this or that woodworking or home improvement project… It’s getting better as I get older, but it’s still pretty overwhelming.
Then there’s my garage; a single car garage that can fit a single car 3 months of the year, but only after a frantic day of moving kids’ bikes and various lawn care stuff out of the way. That usually follows the first forecast of heavy snow.
I envy you with your miniscule ball of wires.
posted by Dave on 7-21-2007 at 9:03 am
I have similar boxes, or at least I did, until I happened upon a great organizing tool.
ziplock baggies.
The sandwich size are great for individual cords and cables, the quart size for longer or sets of cables, and the gallon size for grouping type (in individual baggies) or for larger sets. I put the camcorder manual, charging station, wall wart, data cable, a/v cable and spare battery in a gallon ziplock – it is now dry, all in one place.
The ziplocks store in small places so I take a few of each size and roll them together and put them in a gallon bag in my computer bag.
chris
posted by Chris Hansen on 7-21-2007 at 11:28 am
I so have one of these too. It’s a whole drawer full of random cables and wires that I have collected over the years, and here I thought I was the only person that had something going on like this in the house!
xoxo
posted by sakura on 7-21-2007 at 2:21 pm
Sadly, I have three rubbermaid ball of wire containers. I have no idea how that happened. I have an irrational fear of throwing any cable, adapter, controller or remote out, no matter how many years (decades?) it has been since the device it belonged to went to Goodwill…
posted by Gail on 7-22-2007 at 12:01 pm
I used to be there, man. I had a massive cardboard box that contained my wire ball — that moved with me to every single apartment I moved to…even though I barely had any use for each outdated wire entangled in that mess — the best recommendation I can give is to start living with a woman (or man) you love who likes things clean — then you’ll start feeling really guilty about your useless wire ball.
posted by Z on 7-23-2007 at 7:32 am
When the big war is over, the crowds have scattered, and the plastic-encased-metal-tubing shortage ensues, the man with the wire ball shall be named king.
+++
Three years ago, I began using heavy duty “label” tape to mark what each cord was for so that if and when it got separated from its appliance, I would be able to dig it out.
I think I did that for two appliances and then stopped. Well, it was a good idea for someone with better organizational skills than I.
posted by Sandy on 7-23-2007 at 7:39 am
I think we have a Ball of Wires, or something equivalent, for every room in our house. My actual Ball of Wires is stored in a box in our attic (my studio/office). The box is labeled “Shrunken Heads.” The lid is labeled “Art Project 4.” Obviously, both of these are misleading.
Did you see that one Stephen King movie where the one guy’s brain is represented by a giant attic/warehouse full of folders and boxes? I often think that my brain-space has quite a few Balls of Wires in it. The Ball of Wires, as a concept, is pretty delicious. You never quite know everything that’s in there. Sometimes you find things you swear you never owned in the first place.
When it comes to artistic process, that mental Ball of Wires is invaluable, no? Such mental composting provides the material that makes “inspiration” happen. What do you think? Do you ever have images/phrases that you’ve “collected” surface weeks or months later?
ps- Cynthia: I also collect “souvenirs” of trips in this way, and I too have saved a bag from the gift shop of the Prado. The design on my bag is this sort of architectural drawing that is sooo cool. I love the fact that they spent so much effort to make a disposable item so pretty.
posted by Jyl on 7-24-2007 at 12:32 pm