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

Hot tip - buy a box of small / medium zip lock bags and bag them all up. Duplicates in the same bag are ok (10cm / USB-C) etc.

For the last 10 years my "techno box" has been a box of bags - the cables don't get tangled and small bits (adaptors / notes) get to live with the cables. Its one of the rare few home environment hacks I actually have!

Key for me is to "group" cables. For example, I have a bag of USB-C cables, a bag of USB-A cables, etc.

Grouping them is key to deduplicating.

It's easy to look at a single legacy USB A-to-B "printer" cable in isolation and think "I might need this someday!" Because you really might need it someday. However, if you group them you might see that you have ten of them. And then you can get rid of... maybe 8 of them.

I also (mostly) put individual cables into baggies. You can get clear 2mil generic ziploc style baggies for super cheap on Amazon or elsewhere. $15 for 200 or something. Prvents tangles and way less effort than wrapping or tying them.

Recently, I was screwed by my big box of cables, when I pulled out a SATA power connector for my modular power supply, and learned very quickly that though the ports universally fit across modular PSUs, the pinouts are not actually intercompatible, and you can and will fry your hard drives.

I didn't know this; I had foolishly assumed that SATA power connectors were standardized on both ends.

I wish the old cables, gear, etc. I have squirreled-away stopped saving Customers' and friends' asses because I could feel good about getting rid of it.

We've been unspooling the stash of wood off-cuts, bits of copper pipe, and misc. broken or trash-picked parts from my late grandfather's workshop for the last few years. He always seemed to have materials at-hand to fix anything and, as a kid, I was in awe of that. Now I understand why.

I hope I can leave less stuff for my daughter to poke thru, but at the same time I want to be like my grandfather, seemingly being able to fix anything immediately.

I have decided to not keep many cables. USB thingies, DVIs, VGAs, audio... you can get it from Amazon in pinch with same day delivery and I don't have that much space to spare.

But you can pry my Palm data cables from my cold, dead hands.

My cable box Protips:

1: use transparent boxes like an 11l IKEA Samla so you can easily see what you have.

2: fold each cable in half or a few times more and apply the granny knot[1], this will prevent your cables becoming an entangles mess. There are superior(tm) ways to fold cables, but doing the granny knot for household cables seems the way to go. Doing festivals with retro gaming computers I’ve done this thousands of times and it’s fast, saves space, gives quick and reliable access and prevents damage by pulling on cables from clutter etc

3: use multiple boxes for different categories: audio, game computers, standard power cables, pc cables (sata, usb), power bricks and so on to have some sort of a system, any system will work

4: don’t keep an inventory list: let the anarchy that is you, your memory and family, add and take away cables ad hoc. You will forget what is in the box and that is fine.

5: don’t forget the box exists and look in the box :)

[1]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-g7cauAe7Ec

In 2021 I cut the end off a USB cable to expose the power leads which I scotch taped to the power meter on my bike to charge it. I kept that cable. In 2024 I used it to add USB disconnects to the light strip I attached to the bottom of my son's crib, allowing me to keep the light strip intact when we lowered the base from the baby height to the toddler height. A week later we got rid of the strip because we really didn't need the light like that any more. Still, no regrets. This was my version of using every part of the buffalo.

I feel seen.

When my wife and I moved into a new house, my big box of cables got sorted into several smaller boxes of cables, and an "other" bin.

I also have a travel bag of meticulously packed USB cables of all kinds.

3 times in the last month, I produced exactly the right cable for helping her set up some older hardware at her office at her small business.

The kinds of cables lesser men would have thrown away long ago.

I decided years ago to limit myself to just one box of cables... So then I ended up having to keep finding a bigger and bigger box to switch them to.

One thing that bothers me though (or an excuse my brain uses to justify it maybe) is that it feels so wasteful to dump so many cables that will probably end up in landfill when I know there's someone out there who could make use of them.

If anyone has a suggestion on that or can tell me about the pop up local cable donation swap initiative I haven't heard of them that would be welcome.

Grouping is what actually forces the dedup decision. A single cable always looks useful until you see ten of them side by side.

You’re not serious about it if you only have one box

Whoever does need it, I give you permission to throw out all your old cables, power adapters, and routers. Yes, on the off chance you do decide you need a Palm III dock, Linksys WRT54G, or Sony PSP charger that means you'd have to buy one on Ebay, but you can cross that $10 bridge if it actually happens.

I put my cables in bags then in a box. I can't tell you how helpful the bags are. It only took me like an hour to sort the first time. But it's already saved me hours only a year later. Those 5 minutes of searching add up. Just fight the laziness and don't let entropy increase. It's *far* easier to stay organized than it is to organize

Only one big box? The poor people. I have at least five big boxes and I'm regularly being accused of being a hoarder. Except of course when someone needs a cable ;)

The problem with the big box of cables is that they multiply over the years. I now have 3 big boxes of cables. And a few smaller ones.

At least they are see trough plastic so I can easily see what is inside them though.

I have cabinets for cables (all tie-strapped), arranged in separate compartments:

- USB cables with at least one USB-C end

- All other USB cables

- Network cables

- Audio and video related (RCA, HDMI, SCART, phono, XLR, displayport, BNC, S/PDIF, etc)

- Power cables

- Power adapters

- Batteries and battery chargers

- Flash sticks, type adapters, diagnostic tools

- Spare keyboards and mice

Not a week goes by where I'm not grabbing something from that cabinet. A couple of months ago I actually needed a SCART cable for the first time in forever for some old hardware.

I think what nerds need to understand is that normal people hate accessories. Superheroes need no IV lines, they lose power when they are added and regain it when they are removed. They think throwing away cables and accessories make machines healthier.

So, the way it needs to be communicated is that they are necessary evil that help machines be happy. And also to allow special purpose tools and cables to be stored inside the machine if possible, so they don't psychologically present as excess decorations and/or gifts.

I am sharing this link to my wife right now!

In my defense, over the years, I upgraded the box for one of this big semitransparent IKEA boxes, lid included.

We moved a few months ago and it was so satisfying seeing the inventory of cables I had been saving for years getting used up. The cable-watermark in the box actually started noticably lowering. Nobody gave me the loud praise I deserved but it sure was satisfying saying "yeah I have the cable for it, here you go" with a distinct feeling of superiority.

Clear Hefty Slider bags are perfect for this! I have my cable boxes (Hefty Hi-Rise) filled with these bags, USB -A to USB-C, USB -C to USB-C (then sub-bagged with 65w, 100w, 240w) and so on.

Point is, use clear bags so you can see inside, and Hefty makes the slider version. I get the gallon and half gallon bags for this, and then the quart size as well. This is the Marie Kondo technique and it's amazing for keeping all these cables which are always coming in handy!

I keep the duplicates, because you never know which color and length is going to be the perfect fit for the current need!

My yearly cull of cables across several boxes:

1. Sort into cable type

2. Keep the shortest and longest of each type

3. Ditch all the others

I still have 6 drawers of cables.

In my big box of cables I have, among other things, a double-ended USB-A cable. I understand that this is absolutely not standards compliant, and I have absolutely no idea of where I got it from. I have never used it. But it is a thing that exists.

Getting rid of almost 10 different proprietary charging cables for pre-smart phones and some old laptops felt great though :P

I'm terrified of not being able to find old USB cables.

My D2A converter I use to route TV audio to a small amplifier died. It was cheap, but decent. I wanted another cheap one. I had trouble finding any. Finally, I snagged a pair on Amazon/eBay, but it used ancient USB connections. Luckily, I had old USB cables, so I'm good. But what will I do if the USB cable stops working?

For evidence that Bluesky is a long-term living facility operating as a social media platform...look no further than how their users employ the word "skeet" to refer to "post".

Only one big box of cables! What an amateur.

You need at least 4. And another one for power supplies.

i bought a few loads of nice quality plastic boxes, with plastic lids (its got small handles that "clasp" around the lid, so they're almost air tight)

then i sorted my cables and printed out a normal piece of paper, with the text like "networking", or "PC cables" or whatever and placed that in the side of the boxes

then i can stack them in the basement and easily know which box i need, when i need a cable

its been super handy.

ive used the same trick, for same boxes, for our other storage boxes too. Wifes hobby items, christmas decorations, old consoles, or whatever

makes it super organized. (you need transparent boxes if you wanna just throw in a label print on the inside. i can place one on top of the items and i can see it from above, or either side of the box)

  Thunderbolt 3 -> Thunderbolt 2 -> Firewire 800 -> Firewire 400
                                 -> Ethernet
                   USB 3 -> USB 2/1 --> micro/mini/whatever-USB
  VGA, DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI, microHDMI, [m]DisplayPort

all there. And after this post, I'll keep them even longer.

Often people don't realize there is only "downwards-compatibility", meaning later technologies can "tunnel" an "older" signal (such as DisplayPort being able to Tunnel DVI/HDMI) when using passive adapters, while the other way it's not possible.

Wait,.. you guys only have one big box of cables?

My cable box is my retirement fund. Copper prices are rising, and scrap-metal dealers pay pretty well for it. But jokes aside: last year I also sorted some out and took 10 kilos of household cables to the local scrap-metal dealer here in Germany and got €30 for them. Better than throwing them away.

Forwarding this to my wife.

I have a rack of boxes of cables in my home, its not that out of the ordinary since I'm in the industry and am the network admin for my entire block in my housing community.

The other day I was fabberglased I could not find an HDMI to HDMI cable! HDMI > DVI yes, to VGA yes, to display port yes, to mini-HDMI yes. it was so shameful, for me having to go to amazon/best buy to purchase an HDMI cable is the lowest of the low.

I try to keep only 3 or 4 of the same cable, and if one gets damaged, I throw it away after the fourth or fifth time I look at it and wonder if I can fix it.

The delight of having one of those cables be useful is immeasurable. It doesn't even have to be for your own good. In fact, I bet if we made a site where everyone can catalog their collections and automatically match them up with neighbors that have that cable, people would be more than happy to share cables for free.

This post is basically Futurama's "assorted lengths of wire" in text-form, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxu7z7hfVns

I recently purged my cable box. I had 8 HDMI cables... 8. What do I need 8 HDMI cables for?

I tossed them in the garbage with a ton of other use less cables. I kept one HDMI cable (not 8) and a few odds and ends. I kept one rj45 Ethernet cable and tossed the rest. I even tossed my rj45 crimping tool kit. Why? Because I don't see the need to crimp Ethernet cables anytime soon and should the need arise I can buy a kit for $30.

So at the end my cable box when from being overflowing to half full.

Onto the next project.

Literally today my friend asked me if I have a cable for an iPod :P

I had four big plastic totes full of cables. I pared them down to just one recently. I'm 90% happy with the move. It's ok to let go sometimes.

I have the same. It has saved hundreds of dineros for me and my friends and even better, prevented those ending up in the bottomless trickle up coffers of the zillionaire.

Recently visited Seoul, Korea, and took the subway to Yongsan station and walked over to what is left of the Yongsan Electronics Market (building 21).

1) It still exists. Cool. 2) What's left: Nobody taking their boxes of cables away!

I have surplus/military bare cables dating from the 1970s or so, extra shiny silver plated copper with PTFE jacket: a joy to solder, then more "normal" ones from the late 80s and 90s, then "old" modern ones, that is, power/audio/data cables usable with recent stuff. I'll never throw away any of them because unlike most crap they bundle with consumer devices today, they're made of real copper. Take a cheap cable bought today and chances are that it either sticks to a magnet, meaning it's copper plated steel or other crappy alloy, or it doesn't and it's super light which indicates it's made of aluminium; in all cases not good where power dissipation can be a problem or where resoldering may be necessary. Keep old cables!

Obviously I'm going to keep the box, but the real question is how many hundreds of NEMA C13 cables should I keep?

Test your cables once in a while.

There is a lot of USB cables that look the same but have different capabilities, there is a lot of HDMI or DisplayPort cables that look the same but have different capabilities, there are cables that stop working once you bend them in a particular way.

There are cables that can get sticky and filthy practically on their own (Apple!).

Mind cables whose plugs are bent.

I think the same should apply to perfectly fine screws you take off broken stuff, pieces of metal profiles, nuts etc. But I could never be arsed to sort them proactively. My late father used to keep a Big Jar of Screws and spend time rummage through them when he needed a particular one. I don't know which approach is superior, to be honest.

I purge my box every few years. Do you really need 20 usb cables. I do save the esoteric ones though.

I periodically go through the big box of cables and pull out anything that I don't expect to ever need again.

I put those in another box, seal it completely, and write a message on the outside along the lines of "presumed useless - Sep 2016".

If I come across that box in, say, September 2026, I feel entirely comfortable tossing the whole thing.

Empty toilet rolls. That way I can see the connectors and quickly find what cable I need.

Hey! It’s not just me! The other day, someone at work decided to throw away a large drawer worth of HDMI, DP, USB cables that I had neatly organized a couple of months ago. This was to make room for like 5 spare power strips that take up <20% of the drawer and while we had like 3 empty drawers in the cabinet. Needless to say, I was livid. Especially because I found out while looking for a USB cable to charge my mouse that we had at least x4 in the drawer.

Thank you for listening.

I had an lightning cable connected to a charger, turns out the connector was a bit broken and it started to spark, in the sofa where the end was.

Luckily our fire alarm on four legs quickly alerted us.

Don't keep busted cables. It's not worth it.

I too live in the firm belief that my collection of DB13W3 cables will at some point prove essential to saving humanity from nanobot goo for which the shutdown codes are only stored in earth's last remaining SGI IRIS 4D Crimson.

This is also a good reason to keep your knowledge of MIPS assembler fresh, lest you have to type lots of it very quickly as the swarm approaches.

I used to think this way, but now I know better.

My dad passed a few years back, this past year I spent a considerable amount of time helping my mom and sister tame all his junk. So much junk was tossed or donated, very little was kept and even less sold. Not wanting to burden my family with all of my junk I started working on my own hoard this summer. Letting go wasn't easy, but once it was done I felt less burdened by it.

And yes like clockwork a week after tossing it all I needed some random cable. I spent a couple of bucks for one at Walmart of all places, but Amazon and ebay would have had my back if that cable hadn't been there.

If you have a similar junk box, you have my permission to just throw it away. Don't look in it, don't worry about it, just toss it. You do not need to be carrying so much junk. You do not need 20 year old ethernet cables, 30 year old scsi and ide cables, or 40 year old audio cables. You can buy new ones, in new condition today, most of which are reasonably priced and wont produce random errors or noise due to internal faults.

tl;dr- You don't need it, toss it and do it today!

once i had a break in a sata cable. it caused occasional random bluescreens... some data would corrupt going from disk -> mem.

i throw away all old cables and components now. screw the little sh*ts. into the bin before they cause me that level of misery again.

I use big drawers for "types" and ziplocks for within; i have a network drawer , a media one and a generic one that says "stuff that glues or grabs" (zip ties, tape, etc)

I prefer getting rid of old devices that needing to store old cables ad-infinitum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDRBVaH6Rc is an earworm of a song exactly about this.

We have a local thrift store that sorts and stores the cables very nicely. 95% of the time I can find exactly what I need right away.

That doesn't mean I don't also have my big box of cables, but just offering an alternate strategy.

Somewhere, deep in a storage tote, a UW SCSI cable I paid 50 bucks for at Fry's shows a glimmer of hope.

I always think the worst thing that can happen to a (mild) hoarder like myself is that one of the things I'm hoarding comes in handy. Using one hoarded thing justifies years' worth of more hoarding.

Reminds me of this Onion classic: https://theonion.com/jumbled-nest-of-cords-makes-move-to-thi...

Very funny comedy about this kind of stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6wZUV1t1y0

I will say that Vidmar, Lista, and Rousseau make thin drawer cabinets that work well for cables if you have graduated from "big box of cables" to "cabinets full of cables". Also, old map or blueprint drawers work well. Still requires obsessive coiling, but being able to see (semi-random access) all of them in a drawer all at once is a big speed improvement for searches.

over 30 years of cable collection. rare gems include apple SCSI DB25/CN50/HD50/HD68/HDI-30 cables, apple/NeXT ADB cables, apple localtalk dongles, atari SIO cables, centronics parallel cables, din-8 serial cables, hdi-45, apple adc video cables,DB13W3 video cable, dvi-d video cable, dms-59, firewire 400 and 800 cables, ipod 30-pin cable, ega db9 to vga db15, s-video cables, optical audio toslink cables, component video cables, SCART video cables, micro-dvi/mini-dvi, harddisk IDE/PATA cables, 10base2 BNC cables, miles of rj11, trrs and RCA cables, etc.

All bagged up using ziplock bags and labelled.

Never know when I might need them again...

The trouble with old cables is after years they can become "tacky" or "melt" softer plastics they come into contact with. So storage is important.

I have a transparent plastic box of my own, with cables twist-tied and sorted into labeled zip bags.

The box stays, but cables come and go. I cleared out some PS/2 related cables recently, after not owning any hardware with that port for like a decade now.

This is so strange because I have a big box of cables. And I had a dream about it the other day. Which was more like a nightmare.

I think there was some point in the dream where I was going ape shit because the USB type C ones were missing or I couldn't find them and I was blaming [someone].

I'm not like this when awake FYI.

I think I've cleaned up my box of cables twice in the past and, inevitably, _the very next day_ I did so, I needed one of the cables I had gotten rid of. Never again.

I do group them using one "type" per box too. However I do not use zip-bags, instead I use core of toilet rolls - suitable to add length labeling too.

As an aside, learn to properly care for cables. There are several YouTube videos on this topic, typically from musicians. Most importantly for small molded cables, avoid sharp bends and stress on the wire near the ends. Just a loose coil is much better. And the “over under” method for long cables avoids getting them twisted up.

Same goes for a box of nails and screws.

You never know when you'll need a FireWire 400 cable or a charger cable for a handspring treo, I guess...

Box. Amateur. Talk to me when you have a filing cabinet full of cables with bags labelled “SCSI”, “IEE-488 (Commodore)” and “DIN”.

At least my past self was good enough to bag and label.

I organize mine into roughly three boxes by how common they are.

One for every-day cables (like USB C), one for the stranger cables (like USB-B 3), and one for the one-offs (like a Nintendo DS cable).

It's the easiest to actually keep organized and it's easy to find what I need.

The proper Latin term for someone throwing away your big box of cables is cabula rasa.

I see those boxes at estate sales regularly. And on FB marketplace for free or $5. Or sometimes somebody thinks they're sitting on a gold mine of technological history and tries to ask actual money for a box of 20 year old tangles.

Sometimes hoarding stuff pays off. It's usually just hoarding.

I 3D print cable rocks and mount them in my garage and then hang them in groups by type. I also get rid of every cable type I haven't used in 10 years because you can always just buy more of that cable.

I'm a cable hoarder. I have cables for technologies that have been dead, for decades.

I need help.

I have at least one box of old A/V cables and such sitting in my cupboard that I've been thinking I need to sort through and probably throw out.

Things like big, thick composite cables and extra long VGA cables.

Now… maybe not?

USB has been a blessing in this regard. That dramatically reduced the scope of my cable salad.

I wish the power vs data ones were easier to tell apart though

Every now and then I look through the cables and take out the ones I no longer have hardware for. We have a cargo-tram every couple of months where you can bring things for disposal that don't go to normal garbage or recycling. Supposedly they recycle the cables but I suspect that means incinerating them (to generate electricity) and collecting the metal after.

If you have children, at least one of them may become fascinated with retro hardware, and play with all of this stuff, reinstalling OS and connecting old drives. Once they grow past that phase, THEN you can bring everything to the e-Waste center :)

Wife forced me to consolidate my boxes of cables to a single bin. I joke the retail price of the bin is hundreds of dollars

I had to pull out a VGA cable to connect a screen to my server the other day. The motherboard has IPMI so I hadn't used that cable for years, possibly a decade now. I'll never throw it away.

You want to do task X and discover you need cable Y. You go to find cable Y missing, then discover a new one is $55 and 2 days delivery. Never again.

On the other hand, it feels great to no longer have a box of old cables...

1. it is easy to buy a cable and have it delivered to your home in 24 hours 2. You have to be able to remember -where- the box of cables is 3. box of cables takes up space and clutters your environment

Throw out the box of cables.

One for ac adaptors, one for usb, one for dvi, one for hdmi, one for display port, one for Ethernet, one for audio, one for midi/xlr, one for… let’s see what am I forgetting…

Oh and the extensions, splitters, surge protectors, and remote switches all get their own big box in the garage of course.

do yourself a favour and buy some zip mesh bag on amazon (often used for children's toy sorting; they're much more robust than zip-locks) and use them to group your cables. the big box(es) goes from a source of stress to an absolute delight.

At some point I need to go through my USB-A-C cables and figures out which ones are actually USB 3. Which only have power and which are USB2... Thankfully I think I have tester that can do that.

Pencils bags.

Bag the groups of cables by type and then put them in pencils bags and skip the untangling the next time you have to go hunt for one.

I seriously doubt that I'll ever need the 3 floppy-drive cables or 10 IDE cables that I have.

How on earth do you survive with just one big box of cables? I've got mine sorted into plastic storage boxes with labels, so things like 'Firewire' or 'Monitor' or 'SCSI' can get me to a particular box to sort through. I recently needed a SCSI-2 terminator to connect a CD-ROM drive to a 1990s sampler, and my box came up trumps. It's so pleasing when you find stuff like that...

This is how your kids end up with a SCART cable.

That box that you move every time you move house without opening it.

I do have a big box 'o cables, though organization is getting difficult. I need some way to organize them into broad categories (USB, audio, power, ethernet, etc).

I also have a big box of cables and now I no longer feel shame my brothers.

But make sure to let daddy sammy take away your cognition, that's less important.

How about obsolete cables? IDE, RG59 coax, Cat 5, Composite video, etc...

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.

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.

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.

Today I learned another definition of skeet.

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

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

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

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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