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I Bought Something to Organize My Cords, But it Turns Out It’s Much Better for Toothbrushes

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Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town…read more
published Oct 30, 2019
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Credit: Shifrah Combiths/Apartment Therapy

After a six-month-long renovation to our home, my family is the happy owner of (among other really awesome spaces) a brand new homework wall. It’s a bank of four desks for the kids, each with a set of drawers, a bulletin board, and a cabinet space mounted to the wall above it.

As we were setting up the desks, I paid attention to every detail that could help make our homework station as orderly as possible. One of these details was the cords that hang down from the task lamps. They’re clear and they don’t show that much, but they’re a bit twisted and askew. So I searched Amazon for “cord organizers” to keep everything orderly.

My great idea was that using clips like these would hold the lamp cords taut and straight against the wall.

Cable Clips, 16 Pack
$7.88
Amazon
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But when the cord clips arrived and I tried them out, they were kind of a bust; they merely guided the cords in the direction they were already going (along the wall behind the desks). They did nothing to pull the cords tight. Oh well. Good thing they were so cheap!

And then, somehow, I got the idea to try them out as toothbrush holders in the medicine cabinet.

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Credit: Shifrah Combiths/Apartment Therapy

I’ve been looking for a solution that keeps the kids’ toothbrushes off the counter, and while an over-the-door organizer worked for a while, I didn’t want to take a chance dinging the brand new cabinet paint in the bathroom (also part of our reno).

I chose the lowest space in the medicine cabinet so all the kids (even the two-year-old on his stool) could reach their brushes and, almost as important, put them away! I peeled the label off the backs of the cord organizers and pressed them to the back wall of the medicine cabinet, waiting several seconds with each one, to make sure to get good adhesion. I spaced the organizers so that no two toothbrush heads would be close enough to touch.

It works so well! I’d been looking for some kind of toothbrush organizer that could stay tucked into the medicine cabinet and had been unable to find one. This stroke of bad-luck-turned-unexpected-solution was my own real life “new use for an almost-new thing.”

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Bathroom