Power Strips Have Nothing on Power Cubes

I’m old enough to remember when you had to turn your phone off to charge it, and I don’t mean like, “Oh this will make it charge faster.” No. You HAD TO. You were UNREACHABLE because you needed to CHARGE your PHONE. And don’t get me started about roaming! KIDS, LISTEN. When I first got a cell phone you were charged more for leaving like, a ten mile radius of your home. This whole “when I was your age” screed is just warm up to say: It’s weird that we still need to charge things all the time. Seems like we should be moving on. I understand that there is now wireless charging, but you have to leave your devices laying on the charging pad, which seems so inconvenient? I use my phone while it’s plugged in literally every day. How do you charge your phone AND waste time on Twitter at the same time when you need to keep your phone on the pad? This does not seem like innovation to me. I’m sticking with wires until I see some REAL CHANGE.

All that being said, I have a lot of plugs and adapters and wires around my house. I have lightning cables at the ready in my living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms. The real mess of cords and such is by my nightstand. I had a power strip with plugs for a lamp, a dual USB adapter for my phone/iPad and Apple Watch cords, and a heating pad. This isn’t a huge amount of cords, but it was obnoxious. They’d get tangled up in each other, it was hard to plug them into the power strip, the power strip was a huge dust collector, so when I did (rarely) pull out my nightstand to clean behind it, I was always surprised and horrified at what I found. So I decided to ditch the power strip and get a Power Cube.

This Power Cube by Anker is not only a little cutie pie, it’s a workhorse. I no longer need my dual USB adapter, becasue three USB ports right in the top of the cube. There are three regular AC outlets (three prong compatible, too) on the sides, so everyone gets their own dedicated side of the cube. No more shifting spots up and down a power strip trying to find the least tangle-able setup. I tried to get a photo in-situ, but because what I’m trying to show is a bunch of wires tucked behind a nightstand, it just looks like a mess. But trust me, this is significantly LESS mess than before. (Also a great time to plug my favorite cord corrallers, which are in use all over my house.)

I will say that having a cube with plugs sticking out the sides is less streamlined than a power strip, but for me that’s a plus. It was actually more messy and dust-collecting for me to be able to push my nightstand all the way up to the power strip, which was now wedged between the wall and my furniture. Now I need to keep my nightstand pulled away from the wall a bit, which makes it easier to just drag a Swiffer duster along the back once a week, and I can control the dust bunnies a little better, instead of three times a year deciding to tackle a dust apocalypse happening right next to where I sleep.