Having a general clearout - what to keep?

[omniflow]

As part of early preparations for moving house, I'm in the process of getting rid of stuff. I've collected together all of the various computer and gadget related spares from the house, attic and garage and gone through them. At the moment, I think I'm keeping the following - all quantities are spares:

2 * ethernet patch cables
6 * power leads (2 each of kettle, figure 8 and figure 8 + earth)
2 * display port cables
2 * HDMI cables
8 * USB chargers (4 * UK, 2 * US, 2 * EU)
8 * USB cables (2 * iPhone, 2 * USB -> USB C, 2 * USB C -> USB C, 2 * Micro USB (for Kindle charging))

Everything else is going to the tip. I reckon I'll be down to about 1/4 of what I had.

I'm also planning to bin all of my Hi-Fi related leads - mostly red / white leads for connecting amps to things, but loads of others too. We don't have any Hi-Fi in the house any more - apart from a soundbar for the TV and a Ruark combo unit which plays Spotify.

Then there's all of the various spares from building PCs over the years - mostly Sata cables and motherboard power cables. They're all going to the tip. The only things I'm keeping are every hard drive from every PC and Laptop I've ever owned. One day I'll dispose of those too.

Has anyone else done anything similar and regretted it?

[QJumper]

Nope, I'm the opposite.

I have tons of various cables and keep meaning to get rid of them. My last clearout resulted in me finally ditching scart leads, and at the next clearout will bite the bullet on vga leads.

I haven' got to the sweetspot of having just enough to cover the odd time I might need one, and instead have too many to sort through that I've found myself buying things I alread have. Maybe I should just bin everythigng and buy as I need.

[QuartzDad]

The zip on the type C cable bag is getting a bit tight....

26 x C
3 x Lightning
1 x Apple 30 pin, the original iPad was binned years ago
12 x micro USB

That's just the bottom drawer and before I get to all the crap in the garage filing cabinets.

[phil4]

Like you I will periodically have a cull, but I'll not get rid of any cable type, just reduce the numbers of ones that I rarely ever use. So for example, have an old 30 pin Iphone to USB charge cable. Only 1 though. Same sort of things for PC bits, I've binned off plenty of sata cables, but kept a few also.

[ARHarh]

I recycle old cables for my DIY smart home projects. Right now I working my way thought a couple of RS232 cables. I have crates in my shed just for cables, another for old power supply's. A chest of drawers that has a drawer full of mains leads, another full of old light fittings and switches, and another just waiting for some more junk. And this is after a major clear out a few years ago.

This lot went, some sold but most recycled.

[dundarach]

I now use the rule

"If I can order it from Amazon to be here tomorrow for £20 or less, it goes"

I would recommend the same, in reality you might end up buying the odd cable, however they're likely to be less than a fiver anyway.

Chuck it all mate and live free!

[bigpriest]

I ditched all my old cables and just bought a pack of adapters to convert from/to USB-C.

[Alorotom]

dundarach said:

I now use the rule

"If I can order it from Amazon to be here tomorrow for £20 or less, it goes"

I would recommend the same, in reality you might end up buying the odd cable, however they're likely to be less than a fiver anyway.

Chuck it all mate and live free!

THIS. Its the future.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

I've got rid of so much stuff over the years.

Then I got into Retro Computing and have found myself spending hundreds of quid buying stuff on eBay that I literally threw in the skip 20-odd years ago.

Are you really so short of space that you can't put it all in a box up in the loft of your new place? I wish I had. The irony is I haven't moved house in 20-odd years and have loads of space in my loft. I wish I hadn't thrown all my old stuff away.

[silentbrown]

omniflow said:

Has anyone else done anything similar and regretted it?

Yes - and no, I haven't regretted it!

Worryingly I seem to do this every year as more cables accumulate, and older stuff becomes obsolete. A depressing proportion of the chucked cables are totally unused. I now just keep a handful of travel adapters rather than EU/US leads and chargers.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

ARHarh said:

This lot went, some sold but most recycled.

In fairness, a lot of that does genuinely look like junk so I'm not feeling too bad about that.

Those rotary switch boxes bring back some memories.

[Dave_V6]

All I can say is as soon as you get rid you'll need one! Personally I'd just keep 2 of each type. I skipped a load of TV remotes once only to see them selling on eBay for £70 a pop!! That stung a little.

[PhilboSE]

Over a computing related career covering 45 years and having built/upgraded/scavenged countless hundreds of machines over the years, I’ve collected vast quantities of “that might be useful one day” stuff, kept it in boxes, then had the occasional clearout and the only stuff I’ve ever regretted chucking was some very low end 2D graphics cards that cost like £15 even when new - because no-one makes a cheap 2D graphics card these days if you just want to drive a second desktop monitor.

I’m going through a clearout at the moment, got a perfectly good Cambridge Audio 2.1 speaker set that came with a Gateway 2000 tower machine circa 1994, not used since and are a discoloured white, got to go. Also got a 1U ex-VM server with 4 x 8 core Opterons in it, can’t see me ever firing it up again. All the old cables, connectors, gender benders, HDs less than 4Tb in size, cooling fans, memory chips for outdated formats…all going.

Couple of clearouts ago I found an old MTM hard disk…

[Zetec-S]

dundarach said:

I now use the rule

"If I can order it from Amazon to be here tomorrow for £20 or less, it goes"

I would recommend the same, in reality you might end up buying the odd cable, however they're likely to be less than a fiver anyway.

Chuck it all mate and live free!

Agreed. When we moved 11 years ago I brought with us a couple of boxes of Scart cables/splitter boxes, telephone cable extensions, AV leads, network cables, various power cables/supplies, plus our old Sky box, a VCR and a spare DVD player. They sat in the garage for all those 11 years, never touched. When we moved again last month they all got junked. I've got a small box of modern spares (in fact this morning I needed a network cable to sort out the sonos) but keeping outdated stuff on the off-chance you'll get a hankering for retro tech seems pointless.

[silentbrown]

PhilboSE said:

I’m going through a clearout at the moment, got a perfectly good Cambridge Audio 2.1 speaker set that came with a Gateway 2000 tower machine circa 1994, not used since and are a discoloured white, got to go. Also got a 1U ex-VM server with 4 x 8 core Opterons in it, can’t see me ever firing it up again. All the old cables, connectors, gender benders, HDs less than 4Tb in size, cooling fans, memory chips for outdated formats…all going.

Couple of clearouts ago I found an old MTM hard disk…

Can be well worth checking sold prices on ebay before just binning stuff. The 'retro computing' thing has pushed prices up for lots of stuff that would previously have just been skipped.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

silentbrown said:

PhilboSE said:

I’m going through a clearout at the moment, got a perfectly good Cambridge Audio 2.1 speaker set that came with a Gateway 2000 tower machine circa 1994, not used since and are a discoloured white, got to go. Also got a 1U ex-VM server with 4 x 8 core Opterons in it, can’t see me ever firing it up again. All the old cables, connectors, gender benders, HDs less than 4Tb in size, cooling fans, memory chips for outdated formats…all going.

Couple of clearouts ago I found an old MTM hard disk…

Can be well worth checking sold prices on ebay before just binning stuff. The 'retro computing' thing has pushed prices up for lots of stuff that would previously have just been skipped.

Indeed. Exactly what I was going to say.

In fact, as I previously mentioned, I've spent hundreds of quid in the past 12 months buying back stuff I previously literally threw in a skip, due to the whole 'retro computing' thing.

It's getting increasingly hard to find the really old stuff simply because people who don't know its worth are binning it.

[macstorm73]

Keep everything.. it will be useful at somepoint. I needed a spare PC for a proxmox lab recently, found my old 2012 mac mini and that is doing an ok job for a host.

[MustangGT]

Should I continue to hang onto my USB connected 3.5" floppy drive?





Or donate it to a museum?

[Clockwork Cupcake]

MustangGT said:

Should I continue to hang onto my USB connected 3.5" floppy drive?

Sure, why not? It's not as if it takes up a huge amount of space and you never know when a friend or relative might say "I found this floppy disk in a drawer. Any idea how I can read it?"