Welcome to the family!

I hate to say this, but this is completely and 100% dependent on you and what your priorities are. The list of things you said really don't seem like all that much to be honest. Your collection is only going to get bigger if you continue the hobby. What is the cause of your claustrophoia, is it because the things you have are take up a lot of space relative to what space you have, or are you feeling suffocated by the stuff itself, thats a big difference in terms of what you do to deal with this long term.

You have to figure out what is your motivation, why are you starting to amass things? If you want to be a minimalist, make a list of all the things you absolutely must be able to do, figure out what you need for that, then get of what you really don't need. In some cases you might to able to go out and get something else for the sake of getting rid of two things if that is really what you want to do. On the other hand if you want to keep everything but you just don't have the space you can try some creative organizing, rent a storage unit, or maybe move into a bigger place. Whatever you do just make sure it's really what you want to do.

I'm 32 married and have 4 kids and i've been interested in computers since I got my first 486 when they were new and I was in elementary school. When I got a little into my teens I started dumpster diving and bringing all kinds of stuff home to my parents basement. Through the 90s to early 2000s I had a ton of stuff I wish I had kept, but when I moved out of my parents house at 19 I downsized trashed a few dozen towers which in today's market probably would have been worth 100 bucks a piece to the right person, but they were worthless back then. I basically downsized to 2 desktops.

Now that I am much older and have a house with a large basement and more money to spend then I did back then I found myself getting back into it and wanting to have systems to play all my old games. Several years ago I started hunting for deals. My basement now has about a dozen different monitors and 25-30 desktops and 100s of parts and that is just PC's that doesn't even include my Retro Console habit. I can't seem to pass up a single cheap or interesting deal. I seem to have a need to own every single video card ever made....

Indeed, wait till you get a larger space, it will fill up with 'quality' junk fast.

27 desktops? I thought my half dozen was pretty bad. 🤣

25 years old here and both the room I sleep in AND another one, used as storage space just for this hobby, are almost filled up with retro hardware and music gear. Apart from some whining (parents), no claustrophobic or negative feelings at all... Quality of life != minimalism, whatever floats your boat. Or it's just that my affection towards electronics overshadows everything else 😐

Yep. At one point I had a basement full of vintage computer stuff. We started a family and now I rarely ever have time for it. So I have virtually nothing left. The only thing I have now in the form of a collection are 10 LaserDisc players and 650+ LaserDiscs. But the LD players fit neatly below TVs and the LDs in my walk-in-closet in cabinets. 😀 LD players also die occasionally and repairing them is not an option (shipping is a risk & high cost / parts + labor).

The other thing is that I my case there was a lot of $ tied up in it. Roland and IBM have/had a lot of value in the vintage computing community.

My suggestion: sell / trash / recycle.Keep what you actually use.

i dont mean to insult You, im just saying this out of my own experience, which may or may not be helpful to You - hoarding things in general is often a reaction to lacking sth very important in the emotional department;
imho You want to talk to someone about this first and then make decisions - i mean someone who can help pinpointing the reason;

Hopefully your overall quality of life isn't suffering, because surely at 20 you have other things to do? Are you studying or making music or playing sport or socialising? Life is too short to be all gaming and retro computing.

Personally, though, I can see your point as for me it's a mental struggle to get into the study, because there are too many projects on the go (disassembled computers seem to take up 3x the room of a built one). To avoid stress, I only go in there every so often, and keeping computer equipment out of the way in the rest of the house means that it's not so visible and overbearing (though the wife seems to sense a disturbance in the Force when new items are obtained).

If you don't want to keep everything, sell off or give away a few bits, like the 17" CRT - might be no point having that if you also have a 21". When you have trouble selling stuff you realise it's not that important, and it can be easier to let it go. Good luck!

Golly, I have only 7 desktops and 3 retro laptops and already I feel overwhelmed. Actually I'm now in the process to downshift to 2 desktops tops. My work room is now littered with retro parts and I'm working on four older desktops simultaneously (286, 386, Slot1 P2, Socket A Celeron). My wife is "thrilled" but let's me work on them because I promised to sell them off for good. 🤣

So yeah, I came to the conclusion that unless you have lots of extra space you really shouldn't hoard too much hardware, retro or not. It's just mentally too frustrating to have them lay around idle.

You have two routes:
1) Organizing ( like buying one of those old oak entertainment centers for your TVs and consoles, a few tall shelves, and an computer desk with a bunch of compartments for at least 2 computers. ) Also, when building computers try to stick to micro ATX size motherboards and computer cases.
2) Downsizing ( like keeping only stuff that you can't live without and sell the rest ) You could sell the 17" CRT monitor and keep the 21" one. By the way, I think 19" is the perfect size for a CRT monitor and is not as huge and heavy too. As to CRT TVs, 24"-27" is the way to go for many reasons including smaller looking pixels.

To sum it up, it's all about organizing your stuff and hiding the rest of it in a closet. Must use your space wisely.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

You have two routes: 1) Organizing ( like buying one of those old oak entertainment centers for your TVs and consoles, a few tal […]
Show full quote

You have two routes:
1) Organizing ( like buying one of those old oak entertainment centers for your TVs and consoles, a few tall shelves, and an computer desk with a bunch of compartments for at least 2 computers. ) Also, when building computers try to stick to micro ATX size motherboards and computer cases.
2) Downsizing ( like keeping only stuff that you can't live without and sell the rest ) You could sell the 17" CRT monitor and keep the 21" one. By the way, I think 19" is the perfect size for a CRT monitor and is not as huge and heavy too. As to CRT TVs, 24"-27" is the way to go for many reasons including smaller looking pixels.

To sum it up, it's all about organizing your stuff and hiding the rest of it in a closet. Must use your space wisely.

3) Setting limits. I have a single closet for shelving old hardware, a 4-way KVM (which only allows 4 active units), and additional storage space for 5 mini/midi tower chassis. Whenever I need to do something new, I need to get rid of something existing. Keeps you (and your budget) in check, and helpful for better relations with your family, 🤣

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

Guys and girls, have any of you ever experienced that 'being overwhelmed' feeling from having too much stuff on your place? Literally I'm sitting around a 17 inch crt, a 24' VG248QE lcd, a 21' inch Trinitron, my mine rig (which is on a full tower HAF X case) and a Yamaha keyboard to my left and just from that I feel like I'm going to explode. To sum up a 29' 16:9 crt with about 3/4 gaming consoles. I'm starting to find out I have way too much stuff for being a 20 year old and the worst part is that I don't even know where to place it all nor whether to sell or not. Seriously, I don't want to throw it all into an hyperbole but my quality of life seems to be going down the drain.

Any suggestions? Your help is much appreciated.

Once again, thanks-

I was in your position a few of months ago...

At one point I had about 30 PCs and tower cases and 5 LCD monitors in a small one room apartment with a 5 meter by 4 meter room where I also had my bed, dresser and desk... not to mention a cabinet with loads of parts...

Luckily I moved to a 2 bedroom apartment and turned the smaller one into a hobby room.

Not yet, and you havn't taken it to far until your wife catch's you sleeping with a video card 😜

That's....happened to someone else? 😀

senrew wrote:

That's....happened to someone else? 😀

My wife caught me taking a nap with a Number Nine Ticket to Ride IV 🤣

And I thought I was bad. I have one old computer and a self a old games and spares.

I feel much better about my self. 😀

Up to about 5 years ago, I only had a couple of retro PC's, which I either kept or were given to me.
But, I soon realised that, what if my retro PC's starts failing after 10 years? Do I have backup parts?
Also, when I joined Vogons, I realised that there were some CPU's, etc. that I never heard of.
So, I started to buy/collect more parts, but I think that I've now reached a stage where I can say that I have enough "spare parts".
These days I tend to be careful not to get rid of stuff that quickly, since I've made the mistake in the past to let stuff go, only to regret it a couple of years later.

Someone told me one day that, if you had something in your store room or garage for over 10 years, that you totally forgot about and haven't used, chances are that you will never use/need it.
So, once in a while, it does help to go through all your stuff, decide what you want to keep and what you need to get rid of (cataloguing what you have can also be helpful, since you don't then have to scratch through everything again).

I'm in this position myself... I've got 2 rooms full of old desktops and crap; I think I could get it down to 1 if it were well organized.

I really like what kanecvr did here; everything's displayed with little cards like a museum:
post up pics of your "computing area"

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

To sum it up, it's all about organizing your stuff and hiding the rest of it in a closet. Must use your space wisely.

^This

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

You have two routes:
1) Organizing ( like buying one of those old oak entertainment centers for your TVs and consoles, a few tall shelves, and an computer desk with a bunch of compartments for at least 2 computers. ) Also, when building computers try to stick to micro ATX size motherboards and computer cases.
2) Downsizing ( like keeping only stuff that you can't live without and sell the rest ) You could sell the 17" CRT monitor and keep the 21" one. By the way, I think 19" is the perfect size for a CRT monitor and is not as huge and heavy too. As to CRT TVs, 24"-27" is the way to go for many reasons including smaller looking pixels.

tayyare wrote:

3) Setting limits. I have a single closet for shelving old hardware, a 4-way KVM (which only allows 4 active units), and additional storage space for 5 mini/midi tower chassis. Whenever I need to do something new, I need to get rid of something existing. Keeps you (and your budget) in check, and helpful for better relations with your family, 🤣

4) Get an attic 😁

But in all seriousness, 5) would be to simply limit what you take into your house. Limiting storage space didn't work for me, but what did work was "do I really need this?", I don't need another beige ATX case, I got tons of those so I'm skipping this.
Or when someone's selling some old parts but price/quality is just not very good.

These days I only take stuff that kinda fall into my hands as I still like to contemplate what will be inside this PC before opening it up and disassembling it...it's like opening christmas gifts to me 🤣.
I also toss stuff that's broken (like crappy ATX cases...or proprietary cases that aren't really broken but are much more of a hassle to repair), I just hardly have the time to do anything related with retrocomputers anymore these days.

Theres btw a couple neat threads about how to organize, like these ones
How do you store your computer parts?
How do you organise / sort / store all your retro gear?
Lets all share tips of how we organize our collection of retro computer stuff :)

I only wanted the builds that I once had or wanted. The rest would be in the boxes. Some years later I don't have any complete system that I once had or wanted but have tons of stuff in boxes 😉 When I go search for something I'm almost always amazed what's in the boxes.