Wrangle Your TV Remotes With My Easiest DIY Yet

You ever have one of those light bulb moments where you think you may actually be a genius?

I had one last week, and ever since I've been stupidly excited to tell you guys about it, so thank goodness I finally have pictures.

Quick back story: we finally got new chairs in our game room (yay!), but they have no storage (boo).

Our old chairs looked like this:

(Look at baby Suki! So tiny!)

Our new chairs are separate recliners, which meant we needed to replace the lost storage - and cup holders! - of this old set.

So John built a fantastic little storage table to go between our new chairs - essentially a wooden version of what you see up there - but the TV remotes were still always in the way. (To be fair, they were always in the way with our old chairs, too.)

 

 Can you believe John made this?? It's OK; if I hadn't watched him do it, I wouldn't, either. 

(Pro Tip: Those cup holders are less than $10 on Amazon, and you could drill holes in your existing end tables to install them. Just saying, if you have cats, cup holders are a GAME CHANGER.)

I promise I AM getting to the remote wrangling, but first look how nifty this is:

And no, this isn't the easy DIY to wrangle your remotes. I'm not THAT mean. [evil grin]

In fact, even though our new table is brimming with storage, our 3 remotes always ended up on top, where the cats knocked them off... and then they were always on the floor. Grrr. 

I turned to Amazon, and found this thing called "The Remote Wrangler."

That's when I had it.  MY MOMENT OF GENIUS.

Anyone else seeing what I'm seeing in those silicone remote holders? 

I'll give you a sec.

TIME'S UP.

Here it is, my Mad Scientist cackling-in-the-moonlight moment:

These are the silicone holders from Bath & Body Works that you use to attach your hand sanitizer to your purse. They cost $1 each. The "Remote Wrangler" up there costs $20.

Now, BEHOLD THE MAGIC:

They even have built in loops for hanging!

AAAAAAA!!

Now, for one of our remotes the case fits perfectly with no overlap, and for another the strap does cover a row of buttons:

 

It doesn't press on any of the buttons, though, and since we never use those anyway I just left the strap as-is. You can easily cut the strap thinner to fit around your buttons, though, which is what I did for our Roku remote:

The silicone is stretchy and sticky, so there's no way it's coming off these remotes unless we take it off.

 Now all that's left is to hang them up! You could use any sort of stick-on Command Hook for this, but since I wanted something a little fancy I ordered these off Amazon for $8:

 I stuck them to the front of John's new table, and...

DONE!

No more remotes clattering to the floor or being stepped on by the cats! WOOHOO!

You can see I shortened the silicone straps all the way and trimmed off the excess, so they look like custom straps now, right? Eeee, this makes me so happy.

Oh, want to see our new chairs? These were my birthday present I picked out last May... which we finally purchased last month, ha:

They're more streamlined than the old set, and more importantly, don't kill my back like the old ones, either. Aw yeah, let's hear it for LUMBAR SUPPORT! Woowoo! Anyone? Anyone? 

Yes I'm old what.

 

The chairs are from American Signature, and astoundingly were the cheapest power recliners we could find in all of Orlando, while also being the prettiest and *almost* the most comfortable. (There were chairs for double and triple the price that were arguably more comfy, but these are already a massive step up, so I'm good.) These are $400 each, here's the link.

 Our leather couches in the Steampunk Room are also from American Signature, so we're big fans of the brand.

 (You can download John's laptop decal for free here.)

 I see you're admiring John's custom mouse rest. Pretty cool, right? John does all his computer work in this room (he hates desks), but these chair arms are too round to set his mouse on.

We debated a number of solutions before landing on this one: that's stacked EVA foam that's been glued together - each piece cut to fit the curve of the arm - then covered in vinyl. Because it's foam it's both grippy and slightly flexible, so it doesn't fall off, and it's removable, so John can switch chairs when he feels like it.

 I will say this has been an enormous amount of work to replace all the features of the old center console, but everything here is such a massive upgrade that I'm super-duper chuffed.

 Now I'm just using up all the pretty pictures I took.

 I hope you guys use this remote wrangling DIY - my easiest one yet, right? - and if you do, send me pictures! I'd love to see where and how you hang your remotes to fit your space. One of my favorite things is seeing how you guys improve or customize my DIYs.

 *****

I'm finally working my way through my backlog of Dragon Con flash photos, so those of you waiting for the rest of my coverage (all 2 of you?), I promise it's coming soon!