Helpful Hints from joeeze: Quick & dirty cable/cord control that WON'T set you back $39.99*

Bonus: Not only is my hack pretty much free as well as capable of being assembled from stuff lying around your office or home but it also works about 100x better than the tricked-out, fancy-pants Kickstarter-funded designer-esque iteration I wasted my *$39.99 on last week after I wrote about it with much delight and anticipation.

Long story short: to make you own bookofjoe-esque system you will need the following materials:

1. Binder clips

2. Fridge magnets (obviously any magnets will do, I happen to be sitting at a table near my fridge)

Look at the pictures above, pretty much self-explanatory to anyone over the age of 6 — a majority of my readership.

Why did I go all wild over the MOS system (below)?

TME (too much enthusiasm) is my considered medical opinion as I look at what I wrote last week and my recent credit card statement.

No matter, let's not dwell on the negative but instead focus on the good.

The good news here is that you don't have to waste your money on a failed product.

What's wrong with the MOS system —

besides its expense?

1. The colorful little rubber-covered magnets that are supposed to keep your cables organized are far too weak to be useful, and as a result they fly off the Apple-esque aluminium [sic] central docking station if you so much as breathe too hard on a cord.

2. The little rubber thingies are very hard to manipulate and open and close around a cable or cord.

3. The fact there's only one docking station means you're constantly messing around with your cables and cords, trying to keep them attached to the dock. Wasn't this invention supposed to solve — not exacerbate — the problem of cord control?

On the brighter side, my friend Natalia gets to keep her hard-won pennies and spend them on more promising kit.

FunFact: I initially intended to use my digital camera to photograph all my devices hooked up to my setup but couldn't figure out how to use the camera — with all its buttons and settings and on-screen commands and icons — so instead grabbed the iPhone and did the job.

The tool you use is not necessarily the best one but the best one is always the tool you use.

Think like an anesthesiologist.