Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables

What if you have 7 big boxes of cables…?

I had this terribly rocky relationship with a woman and years later she'd gotten a career in tech and apologized saying she now understood my box of cables. That was about the only apology of hers I ever really believed.

Rubbermaid Roughneck half size of resealable bags of cables.

Today I learned another definition of skeet.

Tthe 2 days delivery is MUCH quicker to buy a new cable instead of searching for that cable in your many boxes of tech crap.

On the other hand, do you really need 50x VGA cables? yes? YES?! ok, as you were! Keep them in the ever growing box.

The idea of grouping by same or at least like is great for de-cluttering.

group all, and use reusable zip ties. then it's something to be proud of

that's boxen in my case and I'm sure others

group plus reusable zip ties. then it's something to be proud of

one box of cables?

those are rookie numbers

10% of my garrage... okay, exxagerating - but at least 0.1% is the big box of cables of who the fuck knows what ... including several firewire, and really old nintendo, and some that I forgot what it was about...

"Why yes I do have E1 twisted pair to E1 coax baluns, and 50 ohm BNC to 75 ohm BNC with matching stubs, and VGA to SCART cables, right here in my big box of cables!" <gestures at shed with bulging walls>

I need to get this under control.

Yesterday I found I still have a dozen firewire cables of different types but no devices to use them with. I put them in the possible recycle box.

Oh never. I have 2 giant boxes of them. The absolute worst thing ever is when you need something like a USB or HDMI cable, and you're forced to spend like 40 bucks at Best Buy because you're in a pinch.

I still have quite a number of packing cubes with silicone-tie'ed and zip tie'ed cables.

I do want to mention though, a huge amount of cables can be replaced by usb-c cables + an adapter. You don't need a bus to HDMI cable: just get an adapter that has usb-c female, that your cable plugs into, that changes it to HDMI. Ditto for displayport, USB micro, USB b, USB a.

And for power VFLEX has a quite reasonably priced adapter to DC barrel jacks. I still have I dunno 70 power supplies, for laptops, gadgets and whatever. But at this point almost all my devices actually run on high efficiency gan usb-c power supplies. These once again follow the pattern: a usb-c female, then a pigtail (yay, better than fixed, like the HDMI), then the barrel jack.

Throwing all that shit in a box and spending half an hour digging through it is half the fun. Your organization systems distress me.

Flip side? I have, in almost half a century of tech dabbling, never once needed a cable from that box that I couldn't have bought again.

I still keep _some_. A basic supply of standard cables "just in case", and clearly labeled things for "who the fuck needed to invent another connector" cases. (Looking at you, printer manufactures and WD hard drive enclosures)

But I strongly suggest tossing most of it. You need the space more than you need more cables.

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