Customized Cord Concealer!

Hi Folks!

As the mother of a very curious 18 month old, I've had to come up with solutions to problems that took a little creativity.  (The solutions, that is.  Not the problems.  Though the kiddo does come up with some novel problems...)  One of the things that fascinated Baby L early on was my mess of electric cords underneath my living room end table:

Unsightly?  Yes!  A tantalizing Gordian Knot perfect for chubby baby fingers?  Double yes!  How to prevent Baby L from playing with these?  Most of the time the trick with him is out of sight, out of mind.  So, I decided to create a cord concealer out of a simple Amazon box:

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First I cut holes on either side to be able to feed cords into and out of this box:

Now, really, you can skip down a few steps to see how I feed the cords into the box.  However, I wanted to make the box look nicer and fit into some of the decor I already had around my living room.  So I decided to cover the box in ConTact drawer liner paper:

Now I like ConTact drawer liner paper to re-paper boxes for my projects because of a few different reasons:

1.  It's very sturdy.  My first box I ever re-papered was one I did as a toy box for the 2nd floor of my condo.  I used gift wrapping paper, and within a few weeks, it looked all torn up and raggedy.  The Contact paper is much more durable.  I'm not crafty in the slightest so doing this stuff once and not having to do it again is a big plus in my book. 

2.  The stickiness of the paper is like a post-it's stickiness where the paper can be lifted up without tearing up the material underneath it for when I mess up.  I always mess up.  It's nice that the paper is so easy to work with. 

3.  Finally the backing of the paper is marked with a grid to cut along.  I have no spatial intelligence whatsoever, so this is a nice idiot-proofing feature:

(Like my pink warm socks?  =D)

Once I papered all the sides of the box that would be visible, I made sure to cut holes in the paper that corresponded to the holes in the sides that I cut earlier:

For my purposes, the cord concealer is done!  Now to feed the cords into it.  First, I fed the main extension cord that I was going to plug everything else into through the bottom of the box.  Notice that I didn't paper the bottom, as it's not going to be seen by the end of the project:

Then I fed cords into either side of the box where cut my two holes:

Then I took this tangle of cords, and shoved it back into the box.  On the right side, the cords to mine and my husband's laptops snake out and are curled up for easy access for when we need a charge:

Now, it may not seem like this is really "out of sight".  However, the next time my son went cruising around this area, the cords were concealed enough that he showed absolutely no interest in them.  I declare the project a success!  And now for a little before and after:

Before!

After!

Hopefully, this idea might work for some of you out on the Internet as well!  Even if you don't have kids, this could be a way of hiding messy looking cords.  How do you hide unsightly cords?