Our home has a two-stage "recycle bin" policy, though: some of my stuff "gets moved" to a random box in the cellar; if I don't ask for it for a few months, it gets "donated". You know.
There’s a similar trick for papers covering your desk; without looking, shove them all in a Manila folder, date, and seal. If you haven’t felt compelled to open it in three months, throw it away without opening.
Admittedly the utility depends on how much you/your office likes paper. Or if you go to an office.
This needs to be ~1 year, to make sure there's nothing important for taxes in the pile.
My family moved into our house when I was 3. Around age 9 we were going to finish the basement and a stack of boxes from the move came into discussion. When I proposed the idea, it was not really considered by my parents.
I've proposed it again to my wife after a move or two, and again she didn't take me up on it.
Maybe someday I'll get to give the method a shot.
Just put random crap in a box with a date in it. You can take it out if it is useful but you can't put new stuff in. Once the date is up, toss/sell it.
Basically expiration date for stuff.
The bins sit neatly on a shelf and I know exactly where to find any type of cable I need. The cable wraps prevent them from turning into giant tangled messes.
I actually tested all my microUSB cables and found out majority of them had trouble delivering over 1A of power through them -> bin.
For the rarer ones I kept one of each (usb-a->usb-b, mini-usb etc), the ones that were the best quality.
Even then, it's most likely even more expensive, because if it's just an off-the-shelf HDMI cable, you'd probably have one around. Look for the cheapest SCSI cable, if you don't think so.
I don't want to say 'store everything', but just backordering stuff is much more expensive in my experience.
Video game output cables are already hard to find for cheap.
Never.
I never would do that and my wife never did this.
