You Don't Need to Keep Every Electronic Box!
Just cleaned out mt garage, closet, and attic. No clue why I kept every single box of anything electronic/tech based in the last ten years. I just tossed boxes for phones I haven't had in years, old CPU and heat sync boxes, boxes for 100mbps nics, old modems I don't have anymore. I've never needed any of these and have brought them with me through too many house moves.
Get a load of this shill for "big warranty", trying to get us to throw away our boxes so we can't RMA defective devices... /s
I am still hoarding actual 100mbps nics, but they don't have boxes, not sure which of us has the bigger problem :D
The last time I shipped something for warranty repairs I couldn't find the box because I had way too many. And it was fine!
only kept my monitor box in case i need to move. first world problems of owning a super ultrawide.
That's totally fair.
I recently bought a house and felt like I could toss my TV boxes. I still kept my 4k monitor boxes.
I moved last year and tossed a bunch of boxes. But those that I kept and used in the move were for my most expensive electronics and I'm glad I did. As usual, the packaging that can withstand shipping halfway around the world was a perfect match against the somewhat incompetent movers that I hired. Mistakes were made, but none of my gear was damaged.
This is the big reason. I keep the boxes to make future moves easy, learned the lesson the hard way.
Other good reasons are the box keeps all the accessories in one place while saying what they are for (psu boxes, looking at you) or the box is great at storing that type of item, like the box my NAS drives came in, perfect foam insert for other drives
I keep it in case i have to sell it as it has more value with the box. Same goes with collectibles and such...
I said the same thing years ago and then was too lazy/never got around to selling anything.
I had the start of a hoard going, was good for me to get rid of it.
I feel attacked.
Yes I do.
I sell most of my old/used but still functional tech on ebay/craigslist. For very low resale value items (under $40) it makes no difference; but for more expensive resale value items, having the original box/packaging/manuals/accessories increases the resale value significantly. My auctions routinely sell for $30 more than comparable items.
It pays (literally) to keep the original box.
Well, I for one am sad I threw out my 90s hardware years ago, including things like a Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3, AWE32, AWE64, SB16 ... those things are really hard to find nowadays if you want to build a retro PC.
I was confused to, but OP just talked about the boxes, not the thing itself
Oh... I definitely misread that.
But I need every box and every manual for everything!
I didn’t realize this is a thing. I thought it was just me. 😊 I found my people.
Lol - I had the same problem for many years, until I finally decided to clean them out like you did.
My policy now is to keep them for a month or so before tossing them. That's arguably when they're most likely to break down and I'd still need to ship/take them somewhere in their original packaging.
It's because when you first buy the thing, you don't want to get rid of the box right away, in case you need to RMA it. So it gets put in the pile along with the rest of the boxes. Then you're in the same place for years and the pile gets bigger.
I do a decent job with culling the boxes, and even toss obsolete tech now and then, but I have been hoarding hard drives for 30 years. It seems more trouble to securely dispose of them than to just let them pile up. I even still have IDE drives and am not quite sure whether I have an adaptor that can read them. But I can't throw them out, because I don't know if I have sensitive info on them.
Can you rent a degausser?
I usually don't keep boxes past the retail return window.
However, I am keeping the box for my ultrawide monitor until such time that I no longer have said ultrawide.
I cut the information off the box and throw the rest of the box away
Now I have a thick ass file folder full of cardboard bits
Thank you for reminding me to purge boxes again; It's probably time._ I will admit I do like to keep the ones with fancy artwork_.
The little plastic trays things come in (fans especially) though, those are worth their weight in gold. I always keep them for sorting things like twist ties, small wires, and tiny extra screws, etc in drawers.
I usually go through the attic boxes every year or so and purge the ones I don't need anymore. I still end up keeping too many though.