It was time so I really threw out tons of cables nobody will ever need again and of the rest I kept one or at most two.
Today the obvious happened. One of those cables nobody ever needs again? Well I need one. So I have to buy one for way too much money. Never again, I’ll hoard all the cables from now on and become a Copper Dragon.
I have, uh, nine. That are sorted. Probably others elsewhere.
Audio, video, USB, AC power cables, wall warts, internal data cables, non-USB data cables, game console specific cables, and adapters/dongles/splitters. (That’s not getting into the game controllers and accessories, expansion cards, drives, box o’ fans, and ye gods forbid, the milk crates full of consoles. And the one full of plug’n’play TV games.)
Whatever it is you need, I got it.
Your categories have me concerned for your efficiency. So many things can fit in multiple categories. Is HDMI audio, video, or non-usb data? How about Component A/V? Are usb-a to micro cables considered USB, or adapters? Or USB to coaxial/concentric barrel (since you don’t have a separate DC power bin)? Do you wrap the DC bricks with their AC cords and bundle them into AC?
Currently annoyed with my 5 boxes of cables and considering a repack.
HDMI goes in video. Sure, HDMI “can” carry audio. Nobody thinks of it as an audio cable. Component cables rarely carry audio. They go in video cables as well, regardless of whether or not they’ve got the extra two RCA’s glommed on.
USB-A to Micro B go in the USB cable box. The adapters box doesn’t have any cables in it, it’s all gender benders and pin converters and so forth.
The box of wall warts is in fact labeled “DC Power” but these days is realistically just mostly full of wall warts. Vanishingly few devices use a DC power cable that is independent of a brick or wall wart but is also not USB of some description. If a brick has an associated AC cable it gets placed in a baggie (almost everything I have is bagged to prevent tangles and aid sorting/labeling), especially since there are so many damn variants of them. Are you going to try to use it without its cable? Of course not.
Do yours however you want. My system, such as it is, started as one box of cables and got progressively speciated as I accumulated too many cables to fit in one box anymore, and thus one category had to be split out.
The next split will probably be separating USB cables that contain a Type C plug on them from ones that don’t, as the lingering threat of being buried under an avalanche of A-to-Mini-B cables is ever present.
I need an Analog Austrian Telephone Connector (TST) to RJ11 ;) Let me know what you want for it!