Save your next empty toilet paper roll. Do not toss it in the recycling. Wrap your hair ties around it.

That is the core of this hack. But there are about ten more things you can do with those cardboard tubes, and I have tested most of them on my disaster of a desk drawer.

My hair ties used to live in a tangled clump at the bottom of a bathroom drawer. Every morning I would dig through them, pull out a knot of five, and spend thirty seconds untangling them. My wife suggested an actual organizer. I suggested we use what we already had.

Hair ties and elastics

Slide hair ties, rubber bands, and elastic headbands onto an empty toilet paper roll. They stay visible, untangled, and easy to grab. You can fit about twenty hair ties on one roll. Stand the roll upright in a drawer and pull ties off as needed.

When the roll gets beat up after a few months, replace it with the next empty one. Free. Always available.

Cords and cables

Fold a charging cable into thirds, slide it inside the tube. Label the outside with a marker — “lightning,” “micro USB,” “USB-C.” Stand the tubes upright in a shoebox or drawer. No more cable spaghetti.

This is especially useful for the random cables everyone has: the one for the old camera, the spare phone charger, the cord for the heated blanket you use twice a year. Each gets its own labeled tube.

Other uses I have tried

Wrapping paper keeper: Slit a tube lengthwise and snap it around a roll of wrapping paper to keep it from unrolling in the closet.

Seedling starter: Cut tubes in half, fill with potting soil, plant seeds. When the seedlings are ready, plant the whole tube — it is biodegradable.

Desk organizer: Glue three or four tubes together side by side, paint them if you want, and use them as a pen and pencil caddy.

Fire starter: Stuff a tube with dryer lint and it becomes a compact, effective campfire starter.

The drawer now

My desk drawer has four toilet paper rolls standing upright: one for hair ties, one for rubber bands, one for lightning cables, one for USB-C. I can see everything at a glance. The tangled-clump era is over.

My wife still thinks we should buy a real organizer. But she has also started saving her own empty rolls. I am calling that a win.