Old PC Cleanup
I admit it, I’m a packrat. Part of that is due to circumstance, but the majority is that I always tend to think “maybe I’ll need that!”. In nothing is this more obvious than my slew of old PC parts, cables, power adapters and whatever else. I’m in the process of building a new office (which is going surprisingly well thanks to a new Ikea Galant Desk) and part of “project simplify”, is to clean out anything that’s not an essential. The goal is that after a month I have the office complete, or at least usable with some decorating, but without all the clutter and old stuff that was in the my old office. I tend to keep around old PC boxes parts come in, as well as old (possibly dead) hard drive and power supplys hoping the day technology might yet breathe life into them.
But this is just what I’m trying to get away from. Taking a page from Zen Habits, I’m attempting to clear out as much stuff from my new office as possible. Some things I’m finding it harder than others to get rid of, but then again I can’t imagine using that old Athlon 550 motherboard anytime soon.
For those of you in this situation where do you dispose of this kind of thing? I image there’s computer recycling places around, but finding them is more difficult than I expected.
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Comments
In fact, we buy used hardware from an Ebay-warehousing company occasionally and part of their business is collecting old systems and stripping the parts into giant piles of mobos, pci cards, etc. They can melt them down for the precious metals apparently. I was there a month ago poking around looking for shortie power cables for our new rack of servers and I came across this box… it was big enough for about 4 people to stand inside and about 4′ deep - filled to the top and then some with motherboards!
In the spirit of your composting article, definitely find a place to drop this off so it doesn’t wind up in the landfill. I’m faced with the same problem… lots of little components I’ve collected like gender benders, cables and other crap I need to slim down on.
I’ll keep an eye out.
@Marcus
Man, i don’t even want to go into my garage either. I think the Salvation Army will do pickups of big items that you might want to donate - like couches and desks and things. They all work for a tax write-off though. There have been a few pages I’ve come across like this that show some cool things to recycle. For anything worth donating though I’d definitely go that route instead.
@Brian
Thanks for the tips. I’ll definitely keep the stuff around until I find a place for it — no rush at least. Chances are there’s one right the corner I didn’t even know was there.
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