Getting Organized & Recharging In The New Year

The New Year means resolutions (and spending that holiday gift cash). If you're like me, one of your resolutions is to get more organized and make your home more enjoyable to live in. After all, for the next few weeks (if not months!), we'll all be nestled inside the house, and while we have lots more to do inside now than we once did, all the electronics and entertainment stuff can make your home full of annoying distractions too. Like all those loops of cable wires and cords that every device needs.

The kind folks at CableOrganizer.com sent me a couple of products to review that address some of these issues. While they have a lot of stuff for organizing your home office and entertainment systems (especially, of course, those cables!), they do have some neat little things that help too.

The BlueLounge® Milo™ Smartphone Holder is a simple, yet elegant, way to hold your smartphone, MP3 player, etc. I don't know about you, but we save our old phones and use them as MP3 players. That way, we are recycling and keeping plenty of storage space free on our current smartphones and their storage cards. This way, we also avoid getting bored with the same-old songs and playlists all the time. Milo will now remain in my home office, on top of the recycled vintage refrigerator drawers, ready for use.

There's a micro-suction "sticky" back which holds the phone in place on the stand, and more of it on the bottom to hold the stand on a flat surface. I can vouch that the stuff is reusable; we have pets (and, I'll confess, dust lol). If the micro-suction pads seem to lose their stickiness, just use some adhesive tape to clean the debris off the pads will be like new again. Honest.

Because the micro-suction pads are reusable, I can move the stand and place it anywhere. And I can rotate which cell phone I now use as an MP3-player -- or remove for charging, as needed. ...Though with the Juicebar® Multi-Device Pocket Solar Charger, I could get months of use out of the same setup!

The Juicebar® Multi-Device Pocket Solar Charger is a neat little charger -- mainly because it is also a solar charger. Sometimes the problem with portable pocket chargers is that you forget to charge them. But the Juicebar holds a charge for months -- so long as you leave the solar part face up. (That's aimed at you, youngest male child!)

The Juicebar comes with a USB cable for standard charging. Simply reverse the connections to send the charge to a device. The device can hold a charge for months, but the built-in LED indicator lets you know when the charge is fading. It also has a flashlight feature, which my kids found pretty neat. (They must prowl around at night more than I thought -- because they sure aren't cleaning under their beds lol)

The only bad thing I can say about the Juicebar is that the shiny stainless steel finish shows fingerprints and smudges. Because of that, and the whole kids-forget-to-charge-the-charger thing, I'm giving the Juicebar mobile charger to my 13 year old son. He definitely does not mind smudges. *wink*

Both the Milo micro-suction stand and the Juicebar mobile solar charger are little things which can go a long way to organizing your home and making it more livable. Now, if we can just get the husbands to do something with all those loops of cords and cables... (Hint, hint; nudge, nudge.)