Where the small things live

Every bag has four things loose in the bottom of it, and every desk has a drawer that lost its argument. The fix is dull and it works, which is a bad combination for something you buy yourself and a good one for a present.

Start at the bottom. A zip pouch costs almost nothing and solves the single most common version of this: cable, charger, adapter, all in one place, all leaving the bag together. Most people own none and are surprised by how much of the annoyance it removes.

One size up, a foldable canvas case takes the things that do not fit a pouch and unfolds flat, which matters more than capacity does. A case you have to dig through is the problem you started with, wearing a zip.

For somebody who has already been through two cheap ones, the Peak Design tech pouch is the version that opens like a shelf rather than a bag. It is the most expensive thing here by some distance, and it is aimed squarely at the person who travels with more cables than clothes.

At home the shape of the problem changes. A compartment box with a lid is where the spare cables, adapters and the things that came with something else are supposed to live. Two of them is the honest quantity: one fills immediately.

And the ending, which is to need fewer of them. A wireless charging station takes a phone and the things beside it off the cable entirely, which does not tidy the drawer so much as stop refilling it.