I decided to have a look in my closet for a cable my mother needed for her new printer at work. I knew I’d collected many cable types over the course of my geeky youth and was sure to find one. What followed I did not expect.

The partial contents of my closet.

The more observant, or geeky, of my readers will note that there are no less than two disused Linksys routers under my desk. On top of the desk still sits my diploma holder, frame and other odds and ends from my graduation as I’ve yet to properly store them for all my sleeping. In the center, next to the big iMac box, are a stack of books on Jim Morrison I inherited somewhere along the way from my parent’s spotty rock and roll youth.

What struck me in this romp through my childhood wasn’t the clear fact that I’m closeted hoarder, but instead the general trend of creating smaller packaging. I paid more attention to that than I might normally have thanks to one of my last classes at SCAD on eco stewardship. I’ll leave you with two examples from Apple.

On the left is OS 10.6 and the right is 10.4. In two versions the package size became a whole order of magnitude smaller.

On the left is the fourth generation iPod dock packaging, released in 2004. iPhone 3G dock packing is on the right, released in 2008.

Oh, and you’ll be pleased to know (Beth) this all went to the recycling center.