Cables. They’re something we all have to live with but don’t necessarily love to look at.

In our home, we’re big fans of electronics, which means we also have our fair share of cables.

One of the areas in our home that used to be the most cluttered with cables was our nightstands. That’s because we use our nightstands as “home bases” for our electronic devices. It’s not uncommon to see our phones, iPads, and Kindles sitting there charging.  

But all of those electronics charging in one spot meant everything always looked messy. There were cables going all over the place. Not only did it create visual clutter, but a lot of times the cables even got tangled together. It was definitely not a system that worked for us.

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When we decided to makeover our master bedroom, I knew I had to tackle the cable management mess.

I’m happy to say that we now have a cable system that’s so much more organized than before. All it took was a few small changes and some pretty nifty products.

Let me show you what we did!

How to Get Rid of Nightstand Cable Clutter

Find Nightstands with Cable Pass Throughs

Our old nightstands in the master bedroom were just not working for us anymore. They were small, lacked storage, and just didn’t fit with the new design of the room.

When I was researching different nightstands for the space, I made sure to look for a few features that would help us manage the clutter better.

Here were some of the features on my wishlist

• Open Storage Space
• Cable Pass-Throughs
• Drawer Storage Space

When I saw these nightstands (exact color available here), I immediately knew they would be perfect!

Not only do they have two large drawers for storage, they also have an open storage space, where we can put our electronics as they are charging.

This open storage space is the perfect feature because it will help us keep the top surfaces of the nightstands clear.

The other feature that sold me on these nightstands (exact color available here) is that inside of the open storage space, there’s a cable pass-through. In the back corner, there is a cutout where you can feed cables through. This keeps them hidden behind the nightstands and not all over the top and sides.

Maximize the Wall Outlet

Behind each of our nightstands, we have one wall outlet. This makes things difficult because most of the time we have a lot more than two things to plug into the wall.

To get the most out of our wall outlets, we decided to get these power strips. This upgraded our wall outlets from 2 plugs each to 6 plugs each. These power strips also hide nicely behind the bed.

Now we have more than enough plugs for things like our electronics, our bedside lamps, and our Eight smart mattress cover.

Use Retractable Cables

One of the reasons that our nightstand cables always looked so messy was because they were so long. It was helpful to have the length so that we didn’t have to constantly unplug our phones to use them. But, when the cables weren’t being used, there was nowhere to store them.

For our new nightstands, we decided to use a whole new cable system.

First, we bought one of these charging stations for each of our nightstands. They have 5 USB ports and fit perfectly into the open storage space in our nightstands. We ran the power cord for the charging station through the cable pass through in the back of the nightstand so that it’s completely hidden.

Then, we replaced our old cables with retractable ones. We bought a lightning USB cable (similar) and a micro USB cable for each of our charging stations.

The retractable cables are the perfect solution for our cable clutter. They give us the cable lengths that we want and they’re able to be stored away neatly. Oh, and they are tangle free too!

I love that I can clean up the cable clutter by just pulling on the wires. They automatically rewind back into a compact roll and can be tucked away in the open storage space.

Since we’ve implemented our new cable management system, our nightstands have felt so much cleaner!

No more cables running all over the place and making the room look cluttered. Just nicely tucked away charging stations hidden inside our nightstands.

I love finding ways to make our home both stylish and functional at the same time. Do you have a favorite organizing product that’s both stylish and functional? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Have a great week!