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Comment by advisedwang

1 day ago

Challenge: come up with categories for the boxes such that every item has exactly one box that is correct for it.

I've got "USB", "AV" and "Networking & PC Accessories", which obviously has enormous overlap, but equally divides the cables I have pretty nicely.

Funny this came up hn today. this week I did some organization of my cable boxes. I use banker boxes on a steel shelving unit. I put the cables and parts inappropriate boxes and labeled them and feel that my corner of the universe is a little bit better organized than before.

Mine is similar but I split audio and video since I have a lot of audio-specific stuff. "Video" only has the various monitor cable standards going back 20-odd years.

I think I've got the same three boxes. HDMI cables and adapters fall into the Venn diagram overlap of the last two IMO. You could also make a strong argument for USB also falling into "PC Accessories". But there's nothing quite as satisfying as having the _exactly right_ cable or adapter on hand to solve a problem. Makes it all worth it!

Easy! I put exclusions on my labels

"USB cables, standard"

"USB passive/special, except pigtails and USB->AV"

"AV, including USB-AV cables"

Those are my categories!

  • "USB", "TV/HDMI", "Networking", "Every Audio Connector Known to Man", and the inimitable: "Plugs-to-Wall"

    • We have the same. Do you know why the ‘every audio connector known to man’ box contain every audio connector known to man but yet never a stereo 1/8” headphone-jack to headphone-jack cable?

      1 reply →

AV, Network, Data, Power (if it doesn't fit the first category, try the next)

If one of those buckets is too full, prepend it with something more specific

i.e. USB, Data instead of just Data