Can we talk about how many zip ties I went through on simple projects last year?

I was cleaning out my garage last weekend and found a big bag of zip ties I bought a few years ago. Out of curiosity I counted the empty bag and realized I had used exactly 647 zip ties in the past 12 months. That blew my mind because most of them were for dumb stuff like bundling cables behind my desk or temporary fixes that I never changed. I even used like 30 of them to hold a broken gutter up during a storm last spring. It got me thinking how many of those could have been replaced with velcro straps or those reusable cable ties. Has anyone else switched to a different method for cable management and actually stuck with it?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_nancy18h ago

Gutter zip ties are temporary until the sun degrades them and they snap.

lily8918h ago

@the_nancy makes a good point about the sun, but zip ties actually hold up better than people give them credit for in many cases. The cheap ones do get brittle, but the outdoor rated black ones last for years on gutters and fences. Still, I ended up switching to stainless steel wire for things like that after watching a neighbor's temporary fix fail in a hard rain.