6 Unusual Ways to Use Binder Clips at Your Office

You have your office arranged with your desk, computer, a bookcase or two, and a filing cabinet. When you want to make it truly yours and better organized without spending hundreds of dollars, what can you do?

Fortunately, there’s one bit of versatile technology that can help: the humble binder clip. Binder clips come in a variety of sizes, so keep that in mind as you go through these suggestions. Some will work best with smaller clips, and some will require the largest. Each of these also links to a brief tutorial where we found these great suggestions, so decide what you want and click away.

1. Photo Wall: Whether you want to have inspirational photos, or images of family and friends by your desk, try this to attach photos to a cork board or cubicle wall without poking holes in the pictures. Put a small binder clip at the top of a photo, a pushpin into the wall, and hang the picture up by the clip. You’ll be able to display a lot of pictures this way without damaging them.

2. Wall Organizer: Speaking of using binder clips to hang important things to a wall, larger ones are great for hanging documents on your wall at eye level. Put up some picture hangers, spaced out, along a free wall. Clip together related pages with binder clips. Finally, hang them from the picture hangers. You’ll be able to look over your documents, and take down what you need, without needing to bend over your desk.

3. Hanging Folder Stopper: Got a set of hanging folders in a drawer? Even though they’re designed to hang in place, the weight of many folders can push some back and right into the drawer, making it a pain to get to what you need. You can use two tiny binder clips to fix this. Push your hanging files forward. Along the edge of the drawer, on the right and left side where the folders end, attach a binder clip with the metal arms down. These will block the folders from going back any farther, and you can always adjust them to get to files or when you add more hanging folders.

4. Cable Catcher: Do you have random computer and other cables that you don’t always keep attached to a device? Attach a binder clip to the edge of a desk or table and push the unplugged end of a cable through the wide part, then pull it back to the rounded end. This includes Ethernet cables, USB cables, chargers and more. It will help you keep those cables organized so you don’t have to untangle a bunch of cords to get to the one you need.

5. Smartphone Stand: During lunch or your regular work day, you might want to have your smartphone upright to make it easier to read. Fortunately, it’s simple to create a makeshift smartphone stand. All it takes is two large binder clips and a business card. Attach one clip to each of the short ends and set the makeshift stand on the table. You can now place your phone horizontally on the metal ends of the clips.

6. Binder Clip Car Phone Mount One of the best things about today’s smartphones is GPS. There’s no longer a need to write down or print out paper directions and hold those pages while you drive, or even own a map. However, most cars don’t come equipped with a place to put your phone, where you can glance at the GPS while driving without having to take your eyes off the road. Whether you’re heading to work, to a meeting, or home from work, you can use this trick to keep your phone at about dashboard level, making your trip much safer. This one’s a bit complicated, so check out the tutorial. All you’ll need is a large binder clip, two rubber bands or hair ties, and two lengths of six inch long paracord.

Now, all you need to do is head to your local dollar store, get some binder clips, and you’ll be able to streamline your work.