I have started taking photos of odds and ends before they go into a storage bin, so that when I need to find a “Firewire 400 cable” or “20 amp wall wart marked linksys” I can do so without rooting through multiple bins like a lunatic.

It also lets me take a glance at the junk I’ve been collecting and find good candidates for throwing into a trash bin or putting up on craigslist — which I successfully did with a battery charger for a rechargeable Nikon battery that I no longer needed.

Obviously you can use whatever photo manager you want for this, I shove them into iPhoto albums titled storage@$name.