Jonathan Ramsey

iPhones, iPods, Zunes, Archos, and the many other portable music and video players have lots of things in common. One of the hottest things, though, is earbuds. All of us who carry devices and their earbuds have the same problem, too. How do you safely store your earbuds.

DIY sites on the internet host thousands of tips on cheap, easy ways to stow those earbuds, but, invariably, the advice is bad. The most commonly touted “clever” solution I’ve seen is the old “wrap the cord around a credit card” trick. Please don’t wrap your cord around a credit card. A credit card is the worst thing to wrap your cords around. Any time you bend a cord, you put stress on those bend points. Doubling a cord back on itself around a credit card, a library card, or a piece of cardstock is a horrible idea. What happens when you repeatedly bend a paper clip back and forth? It wears out and breaks. It may take several times. It may take several hundred times, but that’s a shortened life for an earbud cord. Wrapping around your hand or your iPod itself is better, but it still puts stress on the cord. So, what do you do?

The best way to wrap a cord is in a circle, the bigger the radius the better. You could wrap some duct tape around a toilet paper tube, a short piece of PVC pipe, a 6oz water bottle.

If you don’t feel up to making your own, you can always purchase the ready made type. Some of these are merely cases, but you can neatly roll the cord up into a circle, and place it gently within.

Cable Turtle ($4.00 and up in different colors), iBeatle (how cute and only $6.49 at time of writing), and JLab JBuds Case (around $10 and several different colors). All available at Amazon.com.

Sometimes, though, I just roll up the cord and place it neatly into a freezer “zip” bag (Glad, ZipLock, Target, etc.)

on 04 May 2009 at 7:59 am Tim Sharkey

Good advice, Jon!

Also, on a related topic, be careful about how you wrap up your AC/DC power transformer plugs — you know, the famous “wall warts”. If you pull the cord tight and wrap it around the unit it will eventually (and sooner than later!) break at the point where the cord goes into the box.

Best solution I’ve found: put two fingers at the spot where the cord attaches to the unit and then wrap it around. When you pull your fingers out there will be enough of a loop left to provide strain relief and prevent premature breakage.