You Don't Need to Keep Every Electronic Box!

Just cleaned out mt garage, closet, and attic. No clue why I kept every single box of anything electronic/tech based in the last ten years. I just tossed boxes for phones I haven’t had in years, old CPU and heat sync boxes, boxes for 100mbps nics, old modems I don’t have anymore. I’ve never needed any of these and have brought them with me through too many house moves.

basidialtiger ,

Thank you for reminding me to purge boxes again; It’s probably time._ I will admit I do like to keep the ones with fancy artwork_.

The little plastic trays things come in (fans especially) though, those are worth their weight in gold. I always keep them for sorting things like twist ties, small wires, and tiny extra screws, etc in drawers.

Dianoga ,

I usually go through the attic boxes every year or so and purge the ones I don’t need anymore. I still end up keeping too many though.

thejodie ,

I usually don’t keep boxes past the retail return window.

However, I am keeping the box for my ultrawide monitor until such time that I no longer have said ultrawide.

Jiirbo ,

I didn’t realize this is a thing. I thought it was just me. 😊 I found my people.

DeltaTangoLima ,
@DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com avatar

Lol - I had the same problem for many years, until I finally decided to clean them out like you did.

My policy now is to keep them for a month or so before tossing them. That’s arguably when they’re most likely to break down and I’d still need to ship/take them somewhere in their original packaging.

keeb420 ,

only kept my monitor box in case i need to move. first world problems of owning a super ultrawide.

slippery_salmons OP ,

That’s totally fair.

I recently bought a house and felt like I could toss my TV boxes. I still kept my 4k monitor boxes.

some_guy ,

I moved last year and tossed a bunch of boxes. But those that I kept and used in the move were for my most expensive electronics and I’m glad I did. As usual, the packaging that can withstand shipping halfway around the world was a perfect match against the somewhat incompetent movers that I hired. Mistakes were made, but none of my gear was damaged.

director ,
@director@some.institute avatar

This is the big reason. I keep the boxes to make future moves easy, learned the lesson the hard way.

Other good reasons are the box keeps all the accessories in one place while saying what they are for (psu boxes, looking at you) or the box is great at storing that type of item, like the box my NAS drives came in, perfect foam insert for other drives

dingus ,
@dingus@lemmy.ml avatar

I feel attacked.

RxBrad ,
@RxBrad@lemmings.world avatar

You’re not my real dad. You can’t tell me what to do.

https://lemmings.world/pictrs/image/6fec80ed-5ef8-47e2-b5dd-d980a3623eb1.jpeg

Blaze ,
@Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Impressive bunch of boxes

slippery_salmons OP ,

What a familiar sight!

d_ohlin ,

Lmao this is impressive even puts my pile to shame 😂

kratoz29 ,

This is amazing, wait, that wasn’t the point of this post.

RxBrad ,
@RxBrad@lemmings.world avatar

There’s some real history in there if you look close enough! My VHS Player, the old WRT-54G router, a George Foreman Grill…

I don’t have a problem, you do!

7Sea_Sailor ,

I feel personally attacked by this comment

im-in-this-photo-and-i-dont-like-it-1024x579

steebo_jack ,

I keep it in case i have to sell it as it has more value with the box. Same goes with collectibles and such...

slippery_salmons OP ,

I said the same thing years ago and then was too lazy/never got around to selling anything.

I had the start of a hoard going, was good for me to get rid of it.

Steveanonymous ,
@Steveanonymous@lemmy.world avatar

I cut the information off the box and throw the rest of the box away

Now I have a thick ass file folder full of cardboard bits

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

But I need every box and every manual for everything!

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz avatar

Well, I for one am sad I threw out my 90s hardware years ago, including things like a Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3, AWE32, AWE64, SB16 … those things are really hard to find nowadays if you want to build a retro PC.

Fixbeat ,

Retro PC…is that a thing?

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz avatar

Of course it is. It’s fun to rebuild the computer of your youth, and run old games on periodically correct hardware.

shnizmuffin ,
@shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol avatar

Yes. !retrocomputing is a good community. SDF.org is worth looking at, as the community there predates the internet.

whyNotSquirrel ,
@whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works avatar

I was confused to, but OP just talked about the boxes, not the thing itself

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz avatar

Oh… I definitely misread that.

krayj ,

I sell most of my old/used but still functional tech on ebay/craigslist. For very low resale value items (under $40) it makes no difference; but for more expensive resale value items, having the original box/packaging/manuals/accessories increases the resale value significantly. My auctions routinely sell for $30 more than comparable items.

It pays (literally) to keep the original box.

dhork ,

It’s because when you first buy the thing, you don’t want to get rid of the box right away, in case you need to RMA it. So it gets put in the pile along with the rest of the boxes. Then you’re in the same place for years and the pile gets bigger.

I do a decent job with culling the boxes, and even toss obsolete tech now and then, but I have been hoarding hard drives for 30 years. It seems more trouble to securely dispose of them than to just let them pile up. I even still have IDE drives and am not quite sure whether I have an adaptor that can read them. But I can’t throw them out, because I don’t know if I have sensitive info on them.

Can you rent a degausser?

echo64 ,

Yes I do.

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