Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET

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There's a long-running joke that some of us who live and work with gadgets have accumulated too much tech detritus. We have boxes of old cables and adapters that should have been tossed many moons ago, but we hold on to these things like life preservers because "they'll be useful… one day." Sure, it's been a long time since anyone needed a VGA-to-HDMI adapter, but -- and hear me out on this one -- what if my Auntie Jackie's next-door-neighbor cat sitter needs to borrow one?

Seriously, though, I'm going through a phase of minimization in my life, and while I'm still a long way away from achieving Feng Shui enlightenment, I have been getting rid of a lot of stuff.…