Recording and playing music often involves connecting various thingamajigs to other thingamajigs. That means cables. In my case, lots of cables, all of which tend to wind up in knots.
To bring some order to the chaos, I first sorted all my cables by type: stereo, USB, MIDI, etc. I then took some Ziploc freezer bags in a couple different sizes and wrote the type of cable on the label. If I needed more than one bad, I labelled them “1 of 2,” etc. so I would remember to look in both bags if necessary.
Finally, the bags go in a large bin. Finding the right cable now takes no time at all.