Prevent Your Phone Cable from Getting Twisted and Tangled

Do you find that the cable that connects your telephone handset to the phone on your desk mysteriously gets twisted into a tangle? You have to untangle it every few weeks, or even days? This article will help you understand the cause of phone cable tangles and prevent them in the future.

Steps

Changing the Way You Pick up the Phone

  1. Pick up the phone and hold it to your ear as you normally would.
    • Note which hand you are holding the phone with and the ear you are holding it to. This is probably the dominant side of your body. It may not be the same as your dominant side for handwriting, but for the remainder of this article it will be described as your "dominant side."
  2. Untangle the cord. Hopefully, you are doing this for the last time ever! Unplug the cord from the phone and let the handset rest or your desk or the on the floor. Then firmly take hold of the cord between your first fingers and thumb. Pull the cord along, running your fingers down it as you go and pulling through the tangles along the way.
  3. Plug the handset back into the phone and replace it onto the cradle.
  4. Reposition the phone on your desk for use on your dominant side. For example, if your left side is the side you use when answering the phone, put the phone on the left side of your desk.
    • The tangles occur when the handset of the phone is pulled or twisted around into position that are the opposite direction of the twists already in the chord. While this can happen from either side, it is most common when you pick the phone up with one hand, switch to the other, and then hang up with the hand that began farthest from the phone.

Using a Phone Cord Detangler

  1. Purchase a phone cord detangler. Phone cord detanglers are devices that you can use to connect the phone cord to the phone itself. Rather than allowing the phone to tangle as you move it around, the detangler will spin or rotate in response to the energy built up twisted phone cord.[1]
  2. Untangle the phone cord. Unplug the cord from the phone and let the handset rest or your desk or the on the floor. Then firmly take hold of the cord between your first fingers and thumb. Pull the cord along, running your fingers down it as you go and pulling through the tangles along the way.
  3. Install the phone cord detangler. Plug the cord into the detangler, then connect the detangler to the phone.
  4. Test it out. Give the detangler a try. It should respond to relatively small amounts of pressure. If it does not, you may want to try an alternate model.

Tips

  • Many right-handed people use their left hand as their phone hand, so do not just assume that the hand you write with is your dominant phone hand.

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Sources and Citations