How to Hide Power and Cable Cords

We have beautiful built-in shelves in our living room, and our TV rests on one of them. With a TV comes cords: cable cord, power cord, cord to the DVR box, plus a power strip.

cords out - hide cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza
Before

That’s a lot of not-so-attractive cords. I came up with this great (and inexpensive!) idea for how to hide them.

How to Hide Power and Cable Cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

Here’s what you’ll need:

– An Ikea BRANÄS basket, with the bottom removed or not installed, and

take an Ikea basket without the bottom - hide cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

– A flat-head screwdriver. Really, that’s it!

The basket is held together with tabs that are simply stapled to the sides of the basket:

the basket is held together with just staples - hide cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

What you’re going to do is create a three-sided basket. To do this, remove the tabs for one side of the basket. Use the flat-head screwdriver to pry up the tabs and staples. This isn’t hard to do, I promise. You’ll end up removing four tabs – two on each side of that side of the basket.

pry apart staples - hide cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

Still with me? Good – because you’re pretty much done!

Now that you have a three-sided basket, slide it around the cords. Because the cords I’m hiding here come through a hole in the left back of the built-in shelf, I slid the basket around the cords with the left side (against the wall, close to the hole) as the open side.

open side of basket on left - hide cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

The great thing is that you can adjust the three sides to fit around your cords, wherever they are on or around the shelf!

Now we only see the cords running from the floor/plug to the basket and not the whole mess of cords.

before and after hidden cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

So much better!

basket covers cords - hide cords - Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

And, as you can see from the clock in the pictures, this project took me a whopping 16 minutes.

For more storage and organization tips, please click HERE.

2 responses to “How to Hide Power and Cable Cords”

  1. Libby Avatar

    Great solution here! We tried a 4 sided basket and put the modem inside (it blinks continually and sits under the tv in the guest room) and I thought all was fine. Turns out the wireless signal for my computer down the hall, and all other devices downstairs, was being affected! Subtle, but it was slowing things down. But you don’t have a modem in here , right? The amount of cords etc. is really quite amazing these days……

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    1. Karen Cooper Avatar

      Crazy! Yes, I didn’t want the cords inside a basket (plus that would have required unplugging and replugging everything – ugh!), so that’s why I came up with this solution. No modem here, though. But it would help to have one open side, I bet (plus no basket bottom).

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I’m Karen

I’m a recovering lawyer. Join me on my DIY and organizing adventures!