LESLIE: Joe in Illinois is next up with a tedious organizational project. My favorite! What can we do for you?
JOE: Hi, Leslie. I’m calling because I have unsightly surround-sound speaker wire going throughout my living room and halfway through my house. I kind of want some suggestions on that.
LESLIE: Do you have a girlfriend or a wife?
JOE: Yes, I do have a wife.
LESLIE: And is she super-mad about this mess of wires and that’s why you’re calling?
JOE: Yes, she is.
TOM: Yeah. Leslie feels your pain because she’s got a husband that’s got a really great, awesome stereo system which I appreciate but women, they just don’t get it.
LESLIE: Men. I swear.
JOE: They do not get it.
LESLIE: But I tell you, Joe, I think our hearing is different, because I don’t get it. The surround sound freaks me out; it makes me constantly feel like we’re about to be arrested. I’m like, “Great for paranoia.” I’m like, “What is that? Who’s outside? What’s happening?” I don’t know what a subwoofer does and why is that so important? I can’t tell. My husband thinks I’m crazy. Maybe I have a hearing issue.
But what I can tell you …
TOM: But you can hide wires.
LESLIE: Exactly. Is how to hide those wires.
First of all, any base molding, trim around windows, doors, those things are going to be your best friends. You have got to figure out a way to sort of group these wires together, get them from coming out from behind – and really start from behind your entertainment center. And whatever you can group together neatly, you are going to have to use plastic zippers or zip ties. I’m not sure what you might call them but Radio Shack, Staples, they’ve got them in black, clear, bright colors, whatever you like. But small ones so that you can really tidy up these wires and get them linked together.
And at this point, when I’m doing this, I might label things, because I know how tedious it is to properly install all of this stuff and to make sure that things go back into the right place, should you have to disconnect something or something comes unplugged or you move or what have you. This way, you know exactly what goes where. You know, you might want to take that time, since you’re going to be back there organizing all of this nonsense.
JOE: OK.
LESLIE: So definitely get all of those wires as thinly grouped together as you can. And then depending on where the variety of things are going around the room, you’re going to want to sit things very neatly and contained along baseboards. And use little clips that will group all of those wires together, that you nail in to the top of the baseboard and around door frames and trims.
And the neater and tighter and closer to that wood that you can make it, the better, because that’s going to do its best. I mean granted, it’s still going to be wire sitting on top of some wood trim that’s going to be a different color: black upon white. So you will see them but if they’re tidy, it’s not as annoying.
There are little covers that you can get and foam covers and different types of molding that then you could put on top to go ahead and hide all of that. I don’t know how anal your wife is about hiding these things. I know, for me, I like to just not even know they exist. So start …
JOE: Exactly. She’s the same way.
LESLIE: Yeah, so I would really …
JOE: Hopefully, I was hoping that you had a suggestion of the wireless theater system you guys were talking about (inaudible at 0:16:25).
LESLIE: Oh, you want to buy more audio equipment.
JOE: Yeah. The new – yeah.
TOM: He wants us to tell him to do it, too, give him permission.
LESLIE: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not doing it. Audio equipment, kibosh. Not doing it.
Tom, you’ve got …
TOM: You’d better buy something nice for your wife, first, buddy. That’s all I’ve got to say.
JOE: OK. Yeah, I heard Saturday morning about the drawing for the chance to win that audio system – the wireless speakers that I talked to …
TOM: Yeah, the AudioBulbs, yeah.
JOE: Yeah. I was hoping I could kind of call in and see how we could do that. It could kind of solve both problems there.
TOM: I don’t think you’d be happy with that. It’s a – I think you want a much bigger system than what’s going to come out of that light-bulb design.
JOE: I don’t know. I’m pretty easily happy.
TOM: It could work, huh? Alright.
LESLIE: Listen, this is an issue between Mr. and Mrs. and I’m not getting in the middle. I’ll just help you tidy it up.
JOE: OK. You help me tidy it up, I think we – Jim over there, he could help me just solve the whole problem by just giving me the light-bulb system.
LESLIE: Alright. Shout out to Jim, our engineer.
TOM: Alright.
JOE: But thank you very much.
TOM: You’re welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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