When I was a little kid, I had a box of stuff in my room. It was a collection of stuff, treasures, and whatnot. My mom used to call it “Madam Heap” because it looked like a massive pile of crap that there was no way I would be able to find anything in. I would continually swear up and down that it was really well organized and only looked like that because there was so much stuff. I also fully believed that I could find anything in there if I looked for it or needed it.

Upon reflection… neither of those things were true… sigh You win, Mom!

Now that I live in my own home, I am happy to report that I have a fairly organized system for keeping my and my family’s stuff… sort of… somewhat… mostly. Ok, look, there is one particular thing in my house that causes my anxiety to ramp up every time I think about it. I have a box in my office (I know this isn’t a good start, given my history) where I keep all the spare electronics cords and other such cables and whatnot.

It just piles up

As the “in-house IT guy” at my house, I am usually put in charge of all the electronics stuff, and it’s one of those tasks that I, strangely, have a lot of trouble with. It’s the charging cables that cause me the most trouble. Some last forever, and those are the ones that I love, but when they don’t last that long, they find their way back to me. Over the past couple of years, I have simply been swearing to do it later (spoiler alert… I have not done this).

What ends up happening is that they end up in a pile with all the other cables in the little cabinet in my office, and I worry that they are going to combine into a monster from the deep, which will arise one day and consume us all! AI won’t destroy the world… it’s the Spare Cord Medusa that will come to destroy us and take over everything!!! Yeah, I’ve been watching too much fantasy stuff recently, I know…

Need to sort out which cords are still working

This is, quite frankly, going to be the boring part. I’m going to have to sort out both what every cord is, and then figure out which ones still work and which ones need chucking. While I know that it feels like it could be easy enough, it’s a lot of cords. Lots of stuff to go through. I think that what I’m going to have to do is knuckle down one weekend and just make it happen. I think that once it’s done, I’ll feel much better about it and be able to find things a lot easier long term.

Storage is key

You won’t use all your stuff all the time. When you’re not using some of the tools that you have, it’s important to be able to store them somewhere. If you can figure out a place that is easy to manage (which I’ll admit is technically my problem right now), then that’s half the solution. It’s important, therefore, to have a storage place in your home and a way of keeping all of your technology safe and in good order. In order to do this, you should consider finding solutions that keep your cords in working order and easily accessible. I know that there are a multitude of storage solutions, so I will leave the exact solution to you on this one, because it will depend on what you have in your own home and how you want to store it.

I don’t know about you, but for a long time now I would treat most of my technology as “I should probably keep it just in case.” This, I will admit, is the wrong attitude. It’s important that you keep your tech as up to date as possible and make sure that what you do have not only works, but actually goes with the technology that you use. It’s super easy to let the junk you don’t use every day collect, certainly if you have access to a stash where you don’t necessarily need to see it every day.

Unfortunately, if you let “Madam Heap” pile up, you will have a much harder time figuring out what is important in your technology toolbox to keep and what doesn’t really need to be there. Hopefully, when you tackle the Spare Cord Medusa, you will be able to successfully get everything straightened out and not turn to stone.

How much extra tech that you don’t need do you have?

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