General Chat

Why do men collect cable?

My recently widowed friend has cleared her shed and there was more cable saved up in there than you could shake a stick at. Another woman has recently split with a partner of twenty-odd years and says his cables took up more room than he did.

My partner was a chef and I was a grease monkey but he has the desk drawer full of cable (I will admit to owning three of the fifteen starter motors we dug out of Fred's shed!).

Why do they need it?

They might come in handy!

Cut off 3 pin plugs are another ‘must keep’. OH has been persuaded to part with most of his. A neighbour has been clearing her parents house. She’d unearthed over 40 spare plugs from her father’s glory hole, half of which were broken.

the plugs maybe go back to when you bought things without a plug on, nowadays all electrical appliances come complete with plugs.
We tend to have sockets not plugs, if OH changes a socket for some reason he always keeps the one he changed from???

Oh gosh, those days when you had to put your own plug on things.

Dad sat me down the week before I left home to go to university, and taught me how to change a plug or put a plug on a new appliance. I had to keep doing it until he was convinced that I would remember everything.

In fact, I did put plugs on a couple of things when I was in residence, and then in flats at uni and afterwards.

What a surprise when we came over here and found you ddin't have to do that :-D

Spare plugs and cable are invaluable for:
Making up any length extension lead: just need to buy a trailing socket
Replacing plugs that the puppy has chewed
Ditto cables
Wiring up loft lights
Wiring up garden lights
Extending lawn mower cables to reach the full length of the garden
Wiring floodlights
And lots more, ........

Cut off chewed plugs and damaged sockets get binned, no point in keeping them.

They are, indeed, but they never get used for any of these things.

Oh come on, Brian.
Even taking account of your puppy training, how often do you need to wire a loft, flood lights, garden lights etc? As for a mower extension, too many joins can be dangerous. Far safer to have a fused spare cable on a reel & unroll as needed.

Now Now the cable might come in handy :-|. Well that's what OH says to his two crates full

It's a man thing :-D

Why do (some) women have to collect so much of just about everything?

All sorts of things but men stick doggedly to cable.

You know all men? :-S

That's for me to know.

My missis collects Dust, she has this feather thingy she wanders all around the house waving it about!!

I don't collect dust - it's entitled to a home!

I have a few cables though :-(
Nothing like my dad used to collect - or my brothers and ex, to be fair.

How to wire a plug....

The LIVE BROWN bear
on the GREEN EARTH
under the NEUTRAL BLUE sky

Taught to me by my dad and it thankfully worked every time:-D

I can't remember the last time I needed to wire a plug but good to know I could still do it.

Chris

Is there a suitable place to put all these cables old remotes.plugs etc except landfill? I have a huge collection!

Cables would go in the metal recycling container at your local Dump.
The Attendants would advise if the remotes & plugs could go in the same or with the ‘small appliances’.
Domestic Batteries are collected separately. Some supermarkets have a recycling box for them.

Just thinking, Elizabeth. Maybe you could find a man who didn't have a big enough collection of cables of his own and you could give yours to him.

Chris obvuosly hasn’t tried changing a plug for years!


Maybe after you know what we,ll be able to go back to the old system, which made more sense.