NOT using that cable anymore? Don’t throw it away, because middle-aged men never know when it could be vital:
Charger for a Nokia 3310
The baby born when this phone was discontinued is now old enough to drive, but any second now all smartphones might fail and the mighty Nokia brick will become the only method of communication. And what an idiot you’d feel if you didn’t have a charger.
Earphones that don’t quite work
You can never have too many of these. Especially when the sound only comes through if you twist it at a certain angle. And even then, you don’t get any bass in your right ear. You’d have to be mad to throw them out.
Satnav charger that connects to the cigarette lighter
You no longer own a satnav. You no longer own a car with a cigarette lighter. In fact, you no longer own a car. None of these are valid excuses.
25-pin parallel printer cable
Every printer used to take these, and what if you needed to print your Ryanair tickets and the wifi was down and the only printer available was 19 years old and proudly advertised it could also send faxes? It’d be a godsend.
Laptop charger
It’s always handy to have a spare one of these around. Never mind that this only works with a European socket and is of dubious wattage, if you ever have a hankering to edit spreadsheets in the middle of Paris you know who to turn to.
Miscellaneous
The key to any cable stash is that every single one is impossibly tanged in a bulk of mystery cables. They have no discernible purpose, but that isn’t the point. They could still come in useful, once they’re unthreaded from all the others and an exhaustive investigation reveals what they actually do.
