My office still hasn’t fully recovered from the flooding we experienced back in October. Of all the things I had to relocate to the garage and workshop to make space for new baseboards and carpet, I’d estimate only about 30% have made their way back in. Because some of my shelves were ruined I ended up with a slightly different layout and because of that, I don’t have room in here for everything that used to be in here. But even more than that, I’m being much more selective about what comes back in. It can be difficult to prune a collection one item at a time but I’ve found it much easier to decide which items go back on the shelves.

As part of this process I’ve found myself going through other boxes, crates, and tubs I have stored around and deciding just how much I need and, more importantly, how much I don’t.

One of the things I ran across this week was a tub full of power supplies — “wall warts” as we used to call them. Every time an old cordless phone or pair of computer speakers would die, I would hang on to the power supply “just in case.” Somehow over the years I’ve ended up with more than a hundred of them — all different brands, all different voltages and amps. The idea of course is that at some point in the future I would end up with a device that worked but was missing the power supply, at which point I wouldstick my hand into this tub and pull out a working one like a magician. Presto!

And to be fair, on occasion, I have — but of course that has been the exception to the rule. In reality, most of the power supplies in this tub have been orphaned here for at least a decade. Buried down in the bottom of the tub I found ones with brand names like Atari and Sega on them. In the middle was one from RadioShack. My local RadioShack closed its doors more than a year ago and I doubt that this power supply was new then. If the part number on this power supply is to be believed, it originally powered a digital photo viewer

I spent more time than I should have going through these power supplies. I grabbed four or five that I know work with external hard drives, and the rest went to Goodwill. I always see power supplies there and if you’re looking for one, hey, be sure to check the location near me because they just got 100 more.

I have mountains of things I’ve hung on to “just in case I need them someday,” but… I never seem to need them. And ironically when I do end up needing something like a power supply, I almost never find what I’m looking for in one of these tubs. Instead I end up ordering one from Amazon who will have one on my front porch tomorrow morning for just a few dollars.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is do finally part with much of these things, and the day before the ball drops seemed like a good time to start.