How to get rid of stuff?

[klugesmith]

Is anybody else buried under electronic stuff that's not being saved for study or for projects?
For me it would be easy to take many full boxes, and heavy transformers and motors and buckets of wire, to e-waste or metals scrapyard.
But there's a feeling of duty to the things, to find them a new home where they are wanted and appreciated.  It's 5 months until the next local swap meet when I can give them away.

I just listed a few items on local Freecycle and Craigslist.  If anybody wants them, it'll take much more of my time to communicate and hook up.  Obviously not a practical way to make even a small dent in a large hoard.

Any suggestions or experiences to share, including psychotherapy or medications? 

Any items pictured below are free if I don't have to pay for shipping.

[John123]

How's it going all these months later? I often go through waves of decluttering but feel guilty at the idea of usable stuff going into the landfill, some of this stuff people won't even take for free.

We're a dying breed in today's instant and disposable society.

[klugesmith]

The wall warts, blender base, and UPS with missing battery were taken soon after being advertised on Freecycle and Craigslist.  Along with some painted tin signs for Jaegermeister.

We have a monthly swap meet (electronics flea market) here between March and September.
I am counting the hours until the first in 2020, and will pay $30 for place to put stuff out on tables.
Rarely is there $100 in my pocket at end of the day.  Maybe if I take the ancient oscilloscopes, surplus NST's and variacs, etc. that I will never have time to play with.  Big things and heavy ones should be first to get rid of.

There's also a Repair Cafe institution here.  People bring broken gadgets to be fixed for free, by volunteers like me, instead of going to landfill or e-waste.

[Weston]

You live around the bay area, right? Whats the swapmeet you are talking about? I am always looking for interesting things to go to.

[ritaismyconscience]

Live in Bay Area too

[John123]

Maybe if I take the ancient oscilloscopes, surplus NST's and variacs, etc. that I will never have time to play with.  Big things and heavy ones should be first to get rid of.

You toning the hobby down a notch or just accumulated too much stuff over the years? (I fall under the latter).

[klugesmith]

Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market
http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/

Run by ASVARO since 1974. My first visit was around 2001.
Some nerd-famous people I've talked with there are Bob Pease (RIP) and Jeri Ellsworth.

[klugesmith]

The flea market on March 14 has been canceled because of new public health rules and "an abundance of caution".

[haversin]

You can have my wall transformers ....



If you pry them from my cold, dead hands!

[ritaismyconscience]

I'll gladly take your microwaves for you

[shrad]

Same for me, and organizing my local Repair Café

I'm also cluttered with a load of stuff, but cannot get rid of it either because of the reasons you mention...

And when I'm proposed to get some stuff for free with the possibility to potentially use it one day, or even have an idea of a probable usage, it's over and it's part of my collection before I can think about the hassle of keeping up with the stock

I'm even naturally inclined to do social engineering to prepare people to propose their extra stuff, just in case

Not speaking about the old stock of nails I once bought for 5% the price... need some specific nail size? name it, I have it... more than 40 boxes of several kilos for a couple dozen euros, I couldn't resist

[Sk1ppy]

My issue has never been having too much stuff. It has been more of an issue of keeping things organized. I feel like my worktable invariably ends up cluttered with components and bits of wire and solder strewn all over the place. Perhaps that id just because I am a messy person.

[klugesmith]

Here's a collector's item I recently saved from going to landfill.  Had hoped to pass it along at the flea market.
They don't make 'em like they used to. 
That Jacobs chuck can hold twist drills smaller than 1 mm.  Motor brushes are easy to replace.

Exposed laminations in the middle reminds me of log-hauling trailers seen on highways, where tree trunks form the only rigid connection between front and back wheels.

[klugesmith]

After canceling the flea markets for March, April, and May, the organizers (ASVARO) haven't yet given up on June.  But I know some old (literally) regulars who will be skipping the whole season for their own probable health.

I'm eager to give away some surplus neon tubes, salvaged before the demolition of Park Cinema in late 2013.

(Stock picture from the San Jose Mercury News).

Need to recover use of some benches in greenhouse where they have been stored.  (Cleaned up last weekend in preparation for replacing the plastic film covering, which is breaking down after 12 years.)
There are curved parts from some white paisley shapes and pink architectural shapes.


Now is not the time to talk about luminous tube technology.  Except to note that the pink elements are made from "VOLTARC BLUE" fluorescent-lined tubing, normally used with Ar/Hg fill gas, but in this case filled with pure Ne.


Why is it so hard to discard even broken tubes?  They have pretty cold-cathode electrodes on one end, and could be used with a vacuum pump to demonstrate glow discharges in rarefied air.  It might be therapeutic to peek in the dumpster at a neon sign shop.

Here is a picture in which I think the horizontal bands are an artifact of the scan speed of phone camera.
Near the bottom of left tube electrode is a drop of liquid Hg, at least 100 times more than was needed for the 60 years of service.

[Mads Barnkob]

I'm eager to give away some surplus neon tubes, salvaged before the demolition of Park Cinema in late 2013.

Try to contact Bruce Suba on facebook, he works with neon and does restorations of old installations. https://www.facebook.com/bruce.suba

[klugesmith]

Thanks for the tip.  Made one try at contacting Bruce Soba, who lives in a county next to the one I call home, and has a couple of Facebook friends in common with me (people we acually know).  Will try another way.

Today I was handling some less exotic things to get rid of. Decided to see if taking pictures and telling stories makes it easier.

Broken glass (from non-functional neon) didn't need a picture.

There was a small dead NST with enough tar missing (on purpose, by me?) to reveal primary and secondary wire.  To e-waste or metals bucket, easy. 


A decaying loudspeaker element, perhaps notable because it has a double voice coil and a Radio Shack label. To most people it's garbage, without a moment's thought.   I think e-waste, whose handlers know what stream it goes to (steel, ferrite, not enough copper to care about.) With a battery, I verified that connecting both coils in series gives same motion or no motion, depending on polarity.  The coupling between the voice coils, with or without motion, doesn't need to be measured by me.

Here's an e-waste thing from a box of inkjet printer body parts, which somebody gave to me to get rid of.  Death sentence delayed because of its coolness.   It's got the fixed part of a keypad; array of contact pairs aligned with conductive elastomer button-backs.  One section is 2-layer board with pretty gold plating (don't know if it needs more than ENIG there).  The other section is a 1-sided board with, and this is the cool thing, printed nonmetallic crossovers.

Most of the printer parts go into bin for flea market (after Covid lockdown ends).  I guess they could go to e-waste without much distress.   All the motors work.   The ones with worm gears come with optical quadrature shaft encoders, which did not deserve getting oscilloscope waveforms, but I did measure the optical input and output voltages.

Oh, one other cool thing.  On left side of the picture is another quadrature optical encoder that goes with a taut plastic ribbon, to track the motion of an inkjet printhead. Many discarded printers have those ribbons easy to salvage without tools.  Good for diffraction grating demonstration: put ribbon across the output of a laser pointer and observe a couple dozen diffracted beams.

At this rate it will take about 100 years to go through the worthless stuff,
with no time to present items that people might travel for, or even pay money for.

[klugesmith]

Is this trash or treasure?

[MRMILSTAR]

Treasure to the right person. If I didn't already have a fully-assembled magnetic core board I would take it off of your hands.

[johnf]

Yep think I can see a couple of dropped bits in those cores

[klugesmith]

Flea market cancelled for June, just like the 3 months before.
Tomorrow some unlucky stuff goes to e-waste center, including some things picked up yesterday from my late neighbor's house. (Helping the grown son clean out garage)
Household electric adapters in styles rarely seen or wanted these days:

Not so old light switches. (Cover plates for switches and receptacles are regular garbage)

Grounding light switches, a thing I had never heard of before. They have a place to connect a wire for earthing a metallic box and/or the touchable cover plate screws.  Where are these required?


Might have room to save this curio for the flea market.  Snap-open plastic box with electric warmer, partly melted in one corner.  Is the DC connection from wall plug to the steel tray the result of rework by consumer, an electrical engineer by trade?