Tech and old gadgets taking up whole cupboard spaces, and not knowing what to do to sort them out could be frustrating. Apparently, technology has progressed so much and there is this constant urge to keep our gadgets up to date with the latest releases. At the end of the day, we tend to have a lot of old phones, laptops, game consoles with their cables and chargers tangled, cluttered and lying around the house.
Yes. I can imagine you want to get rid of them – at least the ones that you are sure you would not be needing anymore. But that is where the problem is; It just seems impossible to know which gadget will be useful in near future and which one you should keep!
Some of your old gadgets hold some information that you may need (and don’t want others to get a hold of!). And also the cables and chargers look like they might come handy any day with any of the old gadgets – you just can’t tell which gadget, what day, or if they ever will.
After much thought, decluttering your home of these excess gadgets seems like a good idea, but you are at loss as to where to start. Most of the time, the bother of not knowing where to start just makes you put the whole thing off. The first step to take in decluttering your gadgets is to is sort them.
Choosing what to keep or get rid of.
The first thing you would want to do is gather all your gadgets and their chargers in a pile and check them – Do they still work? How about their chargers and cables? Does every cable or charger in the pile have a gadget that they work for? Or are there any lone chargers or cables that do not belong to any gadget?
Some old devices like your laptops or former smartphones hold some useful information that you might still need. It could be about work for an old job, some pictures or even old playlists, and being attached and clingy to those memories is just going to lead to more clustersof devices around the house, and we are trying to declutter here.
You should also label cables and chargers so that you can tell the device that the cable is used for. You can label cables that look alike by tagging them with tapesand writing on those tapes with markers.
If these cables and chargers are already messy and tangled, and you haven’t found their corresponding device or you don’t just want to throw them away dreading that moment in the future when you may actually need them, you can put the cables or chargers into Ziploc bags then keep these Ziploc bags for about 6 months. If you don’t find a use for those cables and chargers around the house after this time, then you should get rid of them.
You should also get rid of old installation disks, CDs and DVDs. Most computer software and your favourite Classic discs are available online, but firstly, you would do well to check their availability online before you decide to let go of them. If you do not find them online, you can stack old installation disks and DVDs in nylon CD packs.
Also check your computer accessories, like the mouse and keyboards to see if they are working. If more than one of them are, then you will need to ask yourself if you need more than one mouseor more than one keyboard. Do the same for remote controls and old stereo parts.
Once you have decided the devices that you want to keepand the ones that you are sure you want to get rid of, then you can now decide how to get rid of them.
How to get rid of your device clutters.
Firstly, there is no device that cannot be replaced. One mentality that hinders you from decluttering your home is the “What if I eventually need it” thought. You can choose to keep all your old devices if you want, but it wouldn’t be advisable to have a cupboard filled with old devices.
However, you can always get a new cable or part online and get it delivered to your home the next day.
Sell it.
After testing to see if they still work, you can make some bucks back on your old devices by selling them online. There are an array of online stores, like Plunc that will buy your old phones, personal computers, game consoles and cables – if they are worth anything – freeing up some extra cash for you.
Plunc is one such online store specialising in high end tech. It takes as little as a few minutes to sell your product. You just log on, find your product, see how much you can get for it, complete your submission and post. They will receive your device the next day and receive payment soon after.
Donate or Recycle your old device.
If they aren’t worth anything, which isn’t uncommon in the case of old devices, then you can recycle them by giving them to technicians for refurbishing, or giving them to the recovery programmes that many device manufacturers have put in place to collect their old devices and recycle them.
You can also give out your old devices to charity organisations who in turn give them for free to the needy. You never can tell – someone out there might need them.
Whatever you do, do not ever put your device in the rubbish. These devices have some toxic materials in them, and when you put them in the rubbish, they would just end up at some landfill site where they would decay and spill those toxic materials into the earth and create a harmful environment for living things. So it is much better to get some money from a reputable recycler, giving it back to the manufacturers for recycling, or give it out to charity.
Transfer old data to new devices as soon as you get them.
To avoid future tech clutters around the house, always transfer data from your old device to your new device as soon as you get them.
You can go to any technician and they will assist you in transferring your information from your old devices to your new device. There are also several tutorials online that give easy guidelines on how to do that, and once you have transferred all information to one device you can now safely get rid of them either by selling, donating or recycling them.
Lastly, decluttering your home can seem like a big task, and this seeming thought can lead to a lot of procrastination. But the key to defeating that thought is to just start. Take those old tech devices out, and create more space for the new.