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.