warning:

[moominmolly]

If you haven't cleaned out your random-electronic-bits cabinet in a few years, be prepared for an avalanche of chargers patiently waiting to be called on to service devices that have long since broken or shuffled off into electonics purgatory.

I groomed them and put them in a little heap so they could keep each other company, but they still look cold and sad.

Comments

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Yes yes yes. I recently, as part of moving down here, went through every single item that I own. I found heaps of poor, abandoned chargers, entwined together for comfort, sometime nigh-unseparably. The only consolation was that I was able to re-unite some of them with the long-unusable components that they were meant for.

That's why I have a metallic pen to label any new chargers and/or power adaptors that come along with new toys.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

label them! how clever!

*sheepish*

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

In fact, my unique and beautiful snowflake, the one charger that I was looking for in that scary viney mass WAS labeled -- by you. I can actually identify most of the rest of them either by the plug shape or by the brand name molded into the wall-plug bit, but this one was anonymous, and I probably never would have found it without the little masking-tape tag.


Still, yeah, I'm liking the idea of labels, right now.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Oh, my god. That's painfully cute.

Try these

[harimad.livejournal.com]

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W1FA2102C

I use them on food containers, videotapes, stored emergency supplies...

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Metallic sharpies have turned out to be incredibly useful. And I hadn't thought of *this* use yet. Fun with shinys!

[spike.livejournal.com]

Having barely survived a number of the wall-wart avalanches our hostess described, I finally came up with a two-pronged (har har har) approach to this problem. First, and least effectively, I try to always put the charger and the chargee away together, with the charger's cord wrapped tightly around and around the chargee. Of course, all I have to do is forget once, and WHAM the inside of the cabinet looks like it has been graced by His Noodly Appendage.

Secondly, and far, far more effective is this strategy: I got a black sharpie and a metallic "paint marker" like the kind you described. The MINUTE that I unpack a new charger of any sort, I IMMEDIATELY label it (as a rule, before I let myself plug it in), writing right on it what it's for, in some detail. (e.g., "Archos 6GB MP3 player")

So far, the times that I've used that method, it's actually worked, and I've actually been happy. Hrm. Maybe I should post this as a Life Hack (http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Life_hacks)...

etiquette question

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

so, am i violating some important unwritten rule by chucking wall warts when their associated useful thing busts?

Re: etiquette question

[spike.livejournal.com]

Miss Manners writes: Dear 2:11, if you are the sort of person who has never used a wall wart for other than its intended device and purpose, you may toss the wall wart with a completely clear conscience.

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

For every one of these things I've found, I've usually lost another one. I think it would be a great idea to set up a sort of exchange -- list them by voltage/wattage and connector type, and trade!

[fengshui.livejournal.com]

Not a bad idea, but the DC plugs would make it tough. It's quite hard to uniquely identify a DC plug, as there are thousands of them, and even when you think you have one that fits well, you try it and it is off by 1/16" or it's too short or whatever.

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

There aren't quite that many (trust me, I just spent way too much time shopping for one in the DigiKey catalog), and it would be simple to come up with an image showing common lengths/diameters to match against.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

how many do they sell? any guess what fraction of all wall warts that represents?

the reason i ask is that i don't keep wall warts cause i despaired of finding anything that matches them. case in point: i have in front of me two wall warts with nearly identical dc ends. they're the same diameter, and one is a tiny bit longer than the other; i measured 1/32" difference. but one is 5v and the other 9v. so, what they might fit into is no guarantee they'll work.

looking around, i see that some of my tech toys say what flavor dc they like, but many don't. there goes that possibility of matchmaking. so, what do to with these poor lonely wall warts?

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I can recommend against the course of action we took (shoving them indiscriminately into a cabinet and letting them fend for themselves). For the record, we weren't deliberately *saving* them when their devices died, just too lazy to search them out and let them know when their time had come.

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

I think I saw four different connectors of that type.

Often the toy will say what it likes in silkscreen on the PCB, if you don't mind opening it up.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

That's a textbook case of nesting behavior if ever I heard it. *nod*

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Well, it might be if I'd undertaken this task willingly, but really, I just have to clean a whole bunch of shit out of our desk so that it can be moved into our new bedroom. Which is a lovely task!, but one that I'm basically doing out of necessity. I only wish I felt the urge to nest. *sigh*

Patting the chargers on the heads is gratuitous overanthropomorphizing cuteness, and I maintain that I'm just as much a sucker for that now as I ever am.

[cuthalion.livejournal.com]

The thing to do with AC adaptors and other cables is to coil them up and then put them in zip-loc bags! (I like labling adaptors, this orthagonal to that.) Keeps a pile from turning into a tangle.