Daddy Troy: Welcome back to Gear Daddy – I’m your host Daddy Troy. Everybody’s got one – the spaghetti drawer. Today I’m going to show you a fun way to organize this that involves your kids.

First, you’re going to organize the cords, and this is a great chance to talk to your kids about things like color, size, shape and length. This piece right here has a big side and a small side. You could talk about the similarities and differences between these two cords – they’re both white, but one is short and one is long. You can look at different colors – you’ve got white cords, you’ve got silvery metallic cords, you’ve got black cords.

You can also do some investigative playing such as – you’ve got this sort of cord, which looks a lot like this one but what’s the difference? Older kids get into the naming of cords – you can teach them for instance that this is called a USB cord, and you can also look at the symbols – for instance this is a USB symbol.

Its really tempting as a parent the first time you’re doing this, to kind of take over and just show the kid – actually let the kid do the handling of the cords, you just step back and you guide him or her through it.

Once you’ve separated all your cords then you’re going to coil them up, and this is a thing that you probably have to do as a dad, you want to keep all the kinks out – coil them really neatly, and then have your kid help you bind them. Some great ways to bind them are rubber bands, your daughter’s hair scrunchies; maybe some of these twist ties from garbage bags. Zip-ties and these are great – make sure you get the reusable kind.

Or finally what I really love are these Velcro strips - kids can actually manipulate these pretty easily. Simply wrap it around and you are done. Final step – ask your kid is this a big cord or a small cord? Does it go into a big Ziploc bag or a small Ziploc bag? And I say Ziploc – it’s pretty important that you get the kind that actually has the zipper on them.

Kids at this age are starting to develop their fine motor skills and this is great for their little pinching fingers. You want them to be able to pinch this and open it, drop the cord in, have the kid pinch it and close it again. Finally take your sharpie permanent marker – keep this far away from your kid, label it. Last thing you do is give it back to the kid – he or she has some ownership, drop it back in the drawer.

Well that’s its for Gear Daddy and if you have any comments about this program or suggestions of things that you do with your kids, email me geardaddy@dadlabs.com and if I use your ID on the air, I’ll send you some serious schwag. We’ll see you next week.

Child 1: This is a fire wire 800 – it is really fast. That’s a wrap.