I’ve heard of people using garden hose, though I haven’t tried it myself.
Thee are definite advantages to using cord covers designed for that job instead of altering something that was made for a different job.
Cord covers tend to weigh a lot less than garden hoses. The extra weight of the hose may put stress on the appliance causing it to break at the power connection.
Cord covers are designed to be easy to open and close. This allows you to reconfigure and add extra cords in easily; which will save you money is you need to change things around or add more appliances to the area. Also, it gives you access to inspect the cord on a regular basis. If yu need to cut the hose open to access the cord you risk damaging the cord.
Cord covers are made to be near electricity. They are made of fire resistant none conducting materials. Hoses may also be, but since their primary purpose of a hose is to carry water, they aren’t designed and manufactured with electricity in mind. For example, sometimes hoses may metal wires in them for extra strength, which is great for a hose carrying water and getting run over by the lawn mower, but very bad around electric outlets.
It’s probably going to cost more than it seems like at first glance anyway. A 25 foot hose may costless than 20 feet of cable organizers, but that doesn’t take every thing into account. First off, you can typically fit 3 or 4 cords into one length of cable organizer, so several cords can share if they are going in the same direction. Using hose will require each cord to need it’s own.
Mistakes happen, and as you cut open the hoses, some will be wasted and unusable. As a designer, sometimes I needed to calculate the cost of materials for certain jobs. Overage was always factored into the job, When determining how much paper was need to print 500 wedding invitations, depending on the printing method, I needed to make sure we purchased between enough paper for 550 and 600 invitations since between 10%-20% was going to be lost during the printing process. With a first time project that could be a much higher %.
Then there are the extras. The utility knife and blades. The glue or tape. The different glue or tape b/c the first one you bought didn’t work. The bandages b/c the utility knife slipped. Etc.
As I said, I’ve heard of it being done, so if you really can’t get your hands on cable covers, it’s a possible alternative. However, I would shop around pretty hard for the cable covers before settling on them.