"I would like to try the hair room but I wouldn't know where to begin."

Suggest clicking on the Hair Room Tab and seeing how it compares to the Chapter on the hair room in the manual. :)

Load a prop.

Use the hair room grouping tool to define a hair group. Suggest the entire prop to start with. Then click the "grow hair" button.

Turn the hair length dial.

Experiment.

Another thing to consider will be what level of detail you require. Unless you are doing an extreme close up you may be better off creating a long cylinder in a 3D modeling application. Give it a few small offsets so that it does not hang perfectly straight. In Poser apply a depth or displacement map to give it some "fuzziness".

To my view, yes the hair solution can work but I feel that it will get very complicated very fast, the 3D model will be much simpler and just as effective.