Pick a dollar amount and delivery time period you are comfortable with. Get rid of everything you haven’t used in a month that you can get cheaper than that amount and within that time period.

Dont justify after the fact just dumbly implement the rule.

I can think of two instances from the past year or two where this happened: "printer cable" (USB-A to USB-B?), and USB-A extension cable (both at separate times). I think I spent ~$10 for each of these, so my total bill was $20.

So $20 fee to pay for getting rid of a bunch of other cables I didn't need years ago and saving ~500 cubic cm of space.

And I gave the printer cable away to a friend when I was done with it, happy to repurchase it in a few years in the increasingly unlikely scenario that I need it again.

Yeah, after years and years of hoarding lots of hardware and cables that's how I operate now. I have so much less tech trash in my house now, LOL.

Keep a few extra cables of sorts I actually use fairly often (a few spare HDMI cables, some ethernet cables, and a few types of USB cables are no-brainers, for instance). Toss all the rest (am I ever, ever going to use a DVI cable again in my life? Decent odds, no, and on the off chance I do I can just buy another)

Any cable that's more than ~2 spares for a port on some device that is plugged in or otherwise in-use in your house, or isn't a kind of port you've used in a couple years (even if you could) should at least get some serious scrutiny and more often than not be donated or go in the trash.

Like, I held on to a couple coax cables more than ten years after the last time I plugged anything into a coax jack. So stupid, in hindsight.

The dollar amount and delivery time is a good rule is a good one. This varies quite a bit based on the nature of your projects. The month might be flexible. Maybe a quarter or half year for some people?