Someone mentioned here that they placed the charging station at each's cubbie/locker/space in the Mud room bench, which I think is a great idea, people will plug when they get home and they will not forget in the morning when they are leaving the house. In addition you do not have the mess in the kitchen counters or night stands.
You could have the spaces open or with doors.

just don't do anything SPECIFIC for what you have now. keep in mind that electronics change constantly, and it is almost a guarantee that what you have now will not exist in 3-5 years, maybe even in a year!

i would install a cubby with plugmold to power 5-6 things. make sure the outlets or plugmold is spaced to allow for transformers, as some electronics have huge wall worts!

i have eliminated many of our chargers simply by getting the USB cables for our phones/ipods/whatever. leave the cable hooked to the PC, plug the device to teh cable, and it charges. this may be an option for at least some of your goodies to save on room in the charge station.

I agree with davidandkasie - you don't know what the set up will be in the future.

We asked our carpenter to construct an area of cubbie holes to hold various papers (think of the bank of teacher's mailboxes in a school office) Within that area (of the walk in pantry), I had planned to have one box to set cell phones for charging. It's not working very well as the plug for charging is crowded by the wall trim and cubbie boxes and the bulky chargers don't fit well there, plus you have to stick your hand into the cubbie to set down or retrieve your cell phone. That seems to be bad design (cubbies not big enough?) The cell phone chargers have migrated back to the kitchen counter.

I very much like the idea of putting one outlet per locker in the mudroom and having that be a designated charging station. (We don't have lockers but if we were to do it over again....)

Ours is inside a kitchen cabinet... along with the answering machine/home base for cordless handsets.

I forgot about the answering machine. Good catch.

I have 14" between the studs. Is this enough room to construct a box for all of this? Maybe I need 2 shelves?

I saw this at a parade of homes and loved it. It was too late for me to implement it though. This was built into a bench area in the back hallway with a seat below the mirror area and storage on the sides. (I resized the pics but they did not change...sorry)
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There are electrical outlets on the right.
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Why not try something like the "Power Squid" in your mudroom or foyer? The advantage to this power strip is that it is flexible to accomodate those bulky transformer ends of so many of todays electronics. A regular power strip has the outlets so close together that 4 or 5 things with transformers could never sit next to each other. Hope the link works. I love mine!

Here is a link that might be useful: The Power Squid

We both use our cell phones as our alarms so we will have to figure out something around our nightstands. I guess an extra outlet spaced to provide room for the bulky "wall worts" will do the trick.

And it's nice to have the cell phone next to your bed at night for during emergencies. Land lines go out and relatives might need to reach you at night.

And bad guys sometimes cut phone lines.

vancleaveterry,
I heard that having the cell phone by the nighstand can affect the health and the sleep (I am all about a healthy house)

You made a good point about the emergencies and the bad guys.

'And it's nice to have the cell phone next to your bed at night for during emergencies. Land lines go out and relatives might need to reach you at night.

And bad guys sometimes cut phone lines.'

Puhleese! Cell phones have their place but at least I'm not married to one....as for bad guys sometimes cutting the phone lines, that is something that has never happened to me or anyone else I know! How did we ever get through the seventies without them?

Now Neesie...Some people feel that they have to be accessible 24/7. Might miss out on something....

I am not one of them!

Amen, western pa, Amen!

But seriously, when is the last time the boogeyman cut the telephone wires to your house?

Neesie... Bad things happen to good people. Especially when they discount the possibility.

Keep whistling.

since i am on call 24/7, my cell stays on teh nightstand next to me. i charge it on my PC at work during the day, or when i get home for an hour or so.

as to bad guys cutting phone lines, it does happen regularly. so often in fact that many people around here now either go full blown wireless or abck up wireless reporting on their monitored alarm systems. my cousin is in the alarm business, and i used to help him out when he was short handed. some of these crackheads will come by and cut the phone line, break a window, then leave. a couple hours later they come back and enter thru the broken window without ever setting off the alarm! a couple i know had this happen to them, they awoke to the guy crawling past the foot of their bed! luckily they were able to hold him until the cops arrived.

We don't have a wall one, but under the phone in the kitchen we have an extra 4" sink front extension just screwed to the wall with a little piece of countertop on it. We keep phone books behind the doors and the little tilt out trays get the cell phones and keys. There is power there for the chargers.

i like the idea of having a cell nearby. particularly since we have two very young children. puhleese yourself neesie, and i'll do the same.

It's analogous to Pascal's Wager: something with a slight cost to it: the inconvenience of a cell phone near your bed occasionally disturbing your sleep... versus the potential of infinite value in saving your life.

So put the contemptible thing on silent ... but by your bed...so you can have it at hand should the unthinkable happen.

Even Pascal's critics couldn't find fault with that.

We don't have a landline. None of our friends do either. We only have cell phones. Havent had a landline phone in over 5 years, and have never had a problem. Saves me money every month from not having the bill.

txgal06,

Thanks for the pix. I wasn't thinking of "hiding" the electronics, but that is certainly a good idea. Of course if I hide it I'll probably walk out the door without it.

I'm curious what the plugs in your picture looked like? As a previous poster said, the transformers take up a lot of space. I'd like to hide them if I could, but I'll definitely need a place to plug 4-6 of them in. How deep is the box?

Are there wiremolds that have enough space between the sockets to allow for transformers?

I made one out of an inexpensive table that I purchased at HomeGoods.

You can see it by clicking on the link below. It was very easy to do.

I love it!!!

Bella :)

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Make A Phone Charging Table

We're just having a hole drilled into the back of a med. deep drawer in the kitchen desk & in our office & running a power line to that. I'm sure I'll look in the wrong drawer first 90% of the time...

bellacasa/brendamc ~

How did you manage the plugs/outlets in the drawer without danger of pinching (wearing/fraying) the lines? Drawers with electrical lines running through the back may be cute and convenient, but I wonder about the safety?

Hi Meldy NVA, I drilled a hole in the back of the drawer/table, the part that faces the wall. The phones are in the drawer, the cords come out of the hole and are then plugged in. They are not pinched in any way. Does that make sense? Thanks, Bella :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Bella Casa

Does that make sense? Yes and no.

Hole in back of drawer; outlet in wall.

Okay... open drawer, put phone and charger in drawer, plug charger's cord into outlet (huh? you squiggle the charger's cord through a hole to the outlet?), and then close drawer? No no, that can't be right.

Ah... all the recharging cords already run through the hole to the outlet so you just reach into the drawer and grab the right recharger and plug into your phone? Okay that sounds good... but where are those cords when the drawer is being opened and closed? (I'm seeing them squished between the drawer back and the outlet, or else being pulled back and forth through the hole.) And is it okay to leave the plugged-in charger sitting in the drawer unused [but "hot"] while the phone is in your pocket?

I guess I'm missing something obvious... please pass the caffeine....

what about this --is it too small since it is one phone at a time

Here is a link that might be useful: cell phone recharger station

I also have always had an issue with leaving the cell phone charging cord plugged in to the outlet (hot) without the phone plugged in to the other end. I also unplug both ends of mp3, camera, etc. at the computer, too.

I feel that a child could put that in their mouth, wouldn't that be very dangerous? guess I could read the owner's manual for the phone.

Anyway, I'm always monitoring whether it got unplugged after use.

It would be really handy if we could both leave our charging cord plugged in by our nightstand and just grab the end every night and plug the phone in, without having to unplug it from the wall every morning, because you'd have to reach behind, and we are not getting any younger. Don't know how we will address this when we finally build a new house.

cell phone chargers are low voltage. No danger to a child putting it in their mouths.

We are also a "no land line" family. We leave our cell phones on the peninsula near our centralized kitchen, it is the same place we would leave a land line phone if we had one. I do like the idea of charging stations in mudroom cubbies.

I really hate phones and electronic gadets in general. I rarely pick mine up, that is what voice mail is for. I would much rather have my .45 on my nightstand than a cell phone. If someone is bold enough to cut your phone line, I am pretty sure a cell phone will not be sufficiently bulky enough to do any damage when tossed at said bad guy. I hollow tipped .45 round has been proven effective though.

Planned the same idea as we don't have a landline. We have acreage in Texas and of course have to pay to have lines put in or sign up for AT&T. I even tether my cell for internet and it works great (we do have a repeater installed). Personally in your case I'd get extra batteries and charge the batteries seperate from your phones, similar to what we will do. Then you can create an area anywhere to charge them along with cameras, etc.

Our charging station is in the kitchen. It's made out of a stock "sink front" extension (essentialy a 4" bump out for an oversize kitchen sink) mounted direct to the wall. So essentially you've got two doors opening to an area just wide enough for phone books. The two sink-front tip out trays have the cords of the chargers and the phones and car keys go in those. A 5" piece of countertop ontop allows a note pad and a little file for the incoming mail.

It's easy enough to design switched outlets if you want to be able to turn them off and on. I have several of these for accent lighting and/or whatever. Think 'light switch' that actually powers the outlet(s). If you really want to be cautious, you can use the type of switches that have a red indicator light when they are 'live'.

Remember, too, that chargers/transformers can sometimes generate a fair amount of heat. Too many in too confined a space might be detrimental to the electronics to say nothing of being a potential fire hazard.

I've followed this thread to what I think may be the perfect charging station design for my new house---- neesie's squid in bigger version of bellacasa's drawer, and permanently plugged into lorraineal's switched outlet.
Love it! Geniuses at work on this forum!

Congratulations, Emmachas!

I would love to see a pic :)

Bella

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Make A Phone Charging Table