I suppose if you've finally settled down, and gotten all your gear lined up the way you want, then tying various cables together, or hiding them in a variety of ways, would make sense.

Personally, I like the "open clutter" approach where I have the cables etc. from 32 different components (not counting the 13 speakers and the HDTV) zigzagging every which way along the back of my "racks" - which I use as a room divider along one side of my main theatre (making access to the rear a snap). It's easy to separate power from signal cables, and to avoid long parallel runs that could possibly result in interference. Besides, I tried cable ties in the past, but because I seem to change out gear quite frequently, untying and retying cable ties became a pain.

Sometimes there's beauty in chaos.

Jeff Mackwood