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I don't think this is the most important thing out of all things you can learn in a full hour, but it is easy enough and not well known enough that I encourage you to keep spreading the message.

My father in law was very surprised when I could just walk away holding one end of the coiled garden hose and it uncoiled itself neatly with no kinks. The trick was, of course, that I was the one who wrapped it this way the day before!

The principle that induce this technique is that every time you create a loop in one direction of a cable, you twist the cable, the exact same twist that would have occurred if you held a cable with both hands and twisted one side (as if you were squeezing water out of wet cloth.

This technique as well as figure 8 with I use on guylines (when hiking with my tarp), create a counter clockwise twist for every clockwise twist, thus eliminating the tension that causes cables/guylines/ropes to eventually tangle up.

An example of that technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PicTsgj5lA

I’m also a fan of the chain sinnet[0] (or daisy chain) - works really well for storage, including semi rough handling such as tossing in the trunk...

Here is another guide [1].

Note that for longer lines, it is helpful to first fold the line in half to shorten. Also works great for extension cords since both the male/female end are handily together [2].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_sinnet

[1] https://www.animatedknots.com/chain-sinnet-knot

[2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zXG95quOE7Q

For multi-cored cables such as extension leads I would worry about the wear on the cable of all those smallish loops.

For a bit of rope it would be fine, though.

The YouTube video I posted shows how I like to do extension cords. Lots of large , loose loops. Works great.

Wow. I was super skeptical about this thread and clicked on it "just in case I'm missing something". I was. As a nomadic developer, I'm always coiling my cables and I am always cursing my cables because they get tied up or ruined. Now I know it's me! Thank you!

Oh yeah. I've seen numerous extension cords that just twist into an unrecognizable mess after a few weeks because of internal stress, in the hands of folks who don't know better. My own cords, of similar build quality from similar big-box stores, last decades and still coil and lay like new.

You might be interested in the over-under technique that I use, it does not require either hand let go of the cable, so is very fast.

The is the best video I was able to find that illustrates it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktI0mLAoSTc

+1 I did stage work when I was younger and this was one of the most valuable things I took away from it.

Over-under is good for long, thick, delicate cables (e.g. mic/guitar cables). For shorter, thinner cables (e.g. USB cables) I use this technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXMG917XsvU

I have done it so much I can now do it quickly without looking at my hands, so I just automatically do it before putting a cable away or in my bag.

I now never have to detangle birds nests of cables. Over the course of the ~15 years I have been practicing responsible cable storage, that must add up to a lot of time.

Unless I missed a quick hand maneuver, the storage technique you demonstrate, while result in a neatly coiled cable, doesn't involve a counter clockwise twist for every clockwise one, thus creating tension in the cable. For thin cables (and guylines), the figure 8 coil is a better technique. It is just as fast to perform and each twist in the cable is canceled out by a twist in the other direction thus creating less tension in the sheath, and potentially extend the cable lifetime by introducing less inner breakage points.

Here is an example for how I store guylines attached to my tarp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PicTsgj5lA

I learnt this while working in trades. Working with trades people or handymans will teach you a lot of practical skills that are useful in daily life.

Face the wheelbarrow the direction you want to go before you fill it.

Thirded. I worked as a farm hand on a nearby dairy farm through high school, then six years as a mechanic before going to college. As a farm hand, you learn early how to arc weld, or cut steel with an acetylene torch, along simple carpentry and plumbing, as well as mechanical maintenance on equipment. It isn't all just feeding and milking cows. You also learn to deal with shit. Literally tons of it.

I'm willing to bet that cattle ranchers and dairy farmers deal with more bullshit per capita than any other profession.

but they don't even have BAs and PMs...

Seconded. I spend a fair bit it time around tradies in my current role and I’ve absorbed a ton of stuff just by osmosis.

This is opening up a can of worms akin to talking about penetrating oils (PB Blaster, WD-40, ATF/Acetone mix). I've always been and over and roll guy short of 50' cables and back in the day when we had analog snakes that were nearly 3" in diameter and 200' that lived in a road case you didn't have any choice but to over/under unless you wanted to see a half dozen guys cry at the end of the night and the beginning of the day.

> Personally I disagree with his method, what I do is do the "over" loop by placing my palm over the cable, and on the under loop, put your palm under the loop.

You mean like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy3axdxDdKs

Haven't seen the videos, but I was taught the "proper" way of wrapping audio cables when I took an audio recording class, and now I obsessively wrap all my cables that way. So much more useful!

> So much more useful!

The only cables I really deal with are network cables and extension cords and I've always just done the wrap-around-your-palm-and-elbow-method. What am I missing out on?

> What am I missing out on?

The person who showed me how to do it said, "If you've done it right, you should be able to do this"; and with the coiled microphone cable in one hand, she held one end with her thumb and tossed the rest of the coil outwards. It uncoiled in the air and landed in a straight line, no tangles or knots.

Basically, if you do this: 1) The cables are less likely to be damaged, 2) the cables are a lot more 'weildy': they don't get tangled in interminable knots, and expand very easily. The cables themselves remain looking nice as well, and don't get ugly kinks in them.

Went looking for YouTube video's to demonstrate the throwing of said coiled rope.

This came up, though the technique for coiling looks different:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFokJdx12yo

Suspecting (without trying it), that it might work out as the same type of coiling though.

You are missing out on what the previous comments and links are telling you -- you're twisting your poor cables to death.

It's a long slow death then. I have some cables (extension cords) that are thirty years old and I don't think I've had one fail yet.

Also known as "figure-eighting." Guys who do stadium setups for televised sports are champion cable figure-eighters.

Ugh. Some guys take that technique too far and destroy cabling. I had some teams do this with power cables we rented out and they could take a 50ft coil of 4/0 copper cable and turn it into a kinked, broken mess with that technique and it always messed with our coil process that worked much like other users mentioned.

A lot of teamsters, gaffers, and grips did not like having to carry a 50lb cable further than they had to so many loved they could lay the cable down, pick up one end, and walk with it to the junction in order to lay them. (Temporary power, I mean).

As the one responsible for the department looking after that gear, those figure-eight cables were a nightmare because we'd have the prime experience of re-wrapping them all so that we could store them. That caused a time-pinch when we had to handle intake and loadouts at the same time.

I don't do that work anymore, but it's personal hahaha

wrapped cables save lives!

So let us proceed to the real challenge: christmas lights. How can you avoid the guaranteed swearing the following year?

Wrap them around a piece of scrap cardboard.

Alternatively go buy a few of those orange plastic extension cable wrap things from the electrical aisle at a big box store (either the plastic ones that are flat, or the big circular ones with a handle). I've had them for a decade, and every year I wind up my cords on them, and they always unwind easily the next year.

then cut some 1" slits in it to keep them in place.

Careful coiling and then securing the coils with string in 3-4 places workes well for me. Coiling should be done while paying heed to the cable's preferred direction, if there is any tension it does not work well.

Instead of string, I use twist ties, which also come in handy for attaching the lights to things when deploying them.

Rolled up newspapers work well for this too, albeit I doubt a lot of us here get a newspaper delivered everyday anymore

I think this is my favorite video about how to wrap cables: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kda4DPAn3C4

I’ve been taught this technique as the “roadie wrap”.

>It creates kinks when unwound and make it extremely likely for knots to form

99% sure that's a side benefit not the reason.

The way the audio techs explained it to me was as a method of reducing stress on multi-strand copper inside. i.e. the reason why it unwinds cleaner is because said tension isn't there.

I have a slightly different method, but the outcome is how I've been wrapping ski ropes my entire life.

I gotta try this next time I stow an extension cord