After a long, hard day dealing with work and school and kids, all you want to do is get home and curl up on the couch with your old friend Spy Mouse. But two things stand in your way: Your almost-dead cell phone and that too-far-away outlet. Yes, you are lazy. But here's how you can make laziness work for you.

You see, I found myself in such a predicament last night. Both my phone and I were out of juice. Even though dishes had to be done and bathrooms needed to be cleaned, all I wanted to do was lay about on the couch doing dumb things with my smartphone. But the outlet nearest to our comfy sofa is 44 inches away—just out-of-reach of the iPhone's 40-inch charging cord.

I was just about to do something productive when I realized we have two linens bags full of spare "why-would-I-need-this?" cords in the hallway closet. Lo and behold, there was a USB extension cord in one of them. It was like the heavens sang down with an endorsement for my desire to do nothing.

And so, I enjoyed my evening on the sofa. I recharged both my soul and my phone with plenty of cord slack, and thought about the ringing endorsement I would give to this seemingly useless spare cord the next day.

If you don't have a USB extender, get one. It's good to keep around the house. Now that so many at-home devices are connected with USB, we're finding plenty of ways to use our favorite new accessory. So many things seem just-out-of-reach as you're trying to plug them in to the wall or to your computer, and the USB extender is like a less-bulky extension cord for the new crop of devices.

Does anybody else have a useless tech accessory that they couldn't live without?