Organizing Power Strips

Does the order you plug in three cables a couple inches apart matter? Only when you need to unplug them. You will need to unplug one of them.

Let's talk about basic organization.

First, as always, inventory. How many things you need to plug in, of what types, and how many outlets you have. If more is going in than there are outlets, you need another power strip or should swap out a charger for one with more ports. For now, determine what's going in this power strip. That might be based on need, organization, power capacity, or location.¹

Once you've determined what's going to get plugged in here, then you determine which outlet.

Hard constraints first.

If there's a really short cable with zero slack, put it in the closest outlet. If there's a large plug/block which obstructs other ports, move it to the end so it blocks less. Some strips come with an outlet set away from the other ones for this specific purpose. Use it.

There's often some wiggle room to rotate or move the power strip itself; don't forget to play with that too.

When the hard constraints are done, we can do the quality-of-life things. Broadly speaking, there's two kinds of things you plug in. Things which may be unplugged and things which will not be unless you redo the whole strip.

Clump all the things which will not be unplugged together. It's okay if they get tangled together because you aren't going to be unplugging them. If there's nothing you think you'll unplug frequently, consider what you would unplug if you desperately needed an outlet. Maybe you don't have a reason to unplug a lamp, but you also wouldn't mind temporarily unplugging it to make room for a friend's laptop charger.

Put that on the end so it's easy to reach. Ideally keep the things you might unplug on the more accessible side of the power strip, if there is one. That correlates with the location of any USB ports on the strip.²

The goal is a nice grab-and-go experience for unplugging that doesn't involve faffing with the permanent cables and disrupting the setup.

Get the setup right once, and you'll never have to think about it again.

- Rew

Nightly Notes

I did wonder if this is so profoundly obvious there's no point in writing about it, and then I saw my friends digging out a laptop charger out of the tangle in the center of a power strip for the nth time.

Five seconds to think out about it once can save so much minor annoyance.

I'm trying to record my actual decision making model when redoing a power strip. I'm just in the process of realizing that my intuitive process is much more long winded than I realized.

- Rew