There's just so much stuff, isn't there? People have cupboards, attics and garages full of it. Old stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. Old stuff that was really really useful when it was new stuff.
Working in a church I get exposed to a lot of it - we have a lot of old stuff in cupboards too - often the things that once were in somebody else's cupboard. The temptation, when you come across stuff is to process it, to throw some away, give some away, sell a few bits if they have value - but it's rarely to think "I wonder what other use this thing could be, today?"
But because my job is about building community, I know to think exactly that way and to take it a bit further. "I wonder what use this thing could be today and who might be interested in using it or talking about it or telling other people about it?" And the best way to follow through is to blog about it and see who picks up on it. I've been using Facebook for this, but I'm starting to remember a) how limited and soul-destroying that place can be; and b) that it's much better to build a following locally who can use the things I blog about to make connections with each other.
I posted this image the other day because we'd dug a laptop out of a cupboard and groaned. "Vista". And it started some conversations about what you might want to do with it. And then someone said "Have you come across a 3.5" drive recently? I've got some disks that I'd like to retrieve the data from." And now we have a few people connecting with me and each other about something that up until the morning before had just been sitting in a cupboard, feeling lonely. That's the beginning of community, right there - and once it's begun, you can start to nurture it.
BTW after posting the picture, I fired the machine up and was greeted with lots of pop ups telling me that neither Vista nor XP are supported any more. Thanks for the update, Microsoft! But that AMD chip isn't too bad and although it's only got 2GB of RAM we could probably double that easily enough. And yes, if so inclined could probably replace the HDD with an SDD, but eh... all feels like work. So rather than trying to jump through the hoops of upgrading and deciphering the worn out product-key sticker, I installed xubuntu (cos I happened to have it on a stick), which runs along very nicely and we can now put it to work teaching older people how to use the web.