Organizing Your Remote Controls

It seems like every time we turn around in today's society we have a new electronic gizmo that needs some kind of a controller to operate. When we have to deal with things like radios, CD and DVD players, video game systems...the list goes on and on! It is so easy to become annoyed and frustrated by the sheer number of different little electronic doodads that a person needs to operate their home entertainment systems.

Organizing your remote controls and video game controls doesn't have to be frustrating, or even daunting, anymore. Here are a few simple ideas that anyone can use to help keep the electronic clutter down to a minimum in their family room.

• Universal remote. The single greatest method for limiting the number of remote controls in your home. While this item will not work with video game controllers, it will work wonders with every other type of electronic device that normally resides in a family room. Universal remotes come in a wide variety of models that can control as few as one or two different items or up to as many as ten different items. Typically the more that you can control the more expensive the controller is going to be.
• Dedicated storage. Next to purchasing a universal remote, the next best way to organize your controls would be to have some kind of dedicated storage. Typically this is a specific location in the room, an example of this would be the new storage ottomans that can be purchased in most furniture stores. If you don't use a piece of furniture, then you can use something like baskets, the bottom line is that you are going to want to use one spot that is only to be used for your controllers.
• Shoe organizer. Believe it or not, those plastic shoe organizers that are designed to be hung over the door can be perfect for organizing your remote controls and video game controllers. Each pocket can be dedicated to a specific type of controller, and can also be labeled to avoid confusion. If you are going to use this kind of organizer though, be sure that you use one that is clear see through plastic so that you can clearly see what you have put into each pocket.

One final word of advice: No matter what kind of system you use to organize your remote controls you have to maintain it. It will do you absolutely no good whatsoever to go through all your remotes and separate them, if you don't put them back where you got them. If you don't, then you are going to be right back where you started, and have yet another large mess that you have to clean up.