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A dot a day keeps the clutter away

scottlawsonbc.com

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Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#11

Post by jofzar »

jmward01 wrote: post #2

First, great system. Second, I am going to pine for an electronic version and having read the post I get it. Feel free to laugh and read the next comment. That said there are two aspects to this system that come to mind immediately: - The value of the information: This is the purpose of the dots and, I think the stated reason for the dots. - The value of the process: If you did this and didn't have the final dot info…

Imo NFC tags could be the easiest way of doing the same thing for bigger items, scan it when you use it, log it.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#12

Post by scottlawson »

stickfigure wrote: post #4

Interesting, but this seems to solve the wrong problem. I already know that the ice cream maker sitting on the shelf hasn't been used in 5 years. The problem is... what if I want to make ice cream?

sometimes I see no dots on things that are cool and I have this innate urge to want to hold onto.

One example is a Picomotor piezo actuator. It's a really cool piece of technology. I want to believe so badly that I'll use it in a project someday.

but after four years and seeing zero dots on it, it's like having concrete evidence PROVING that I'm delusionally optimistic about how useful it is. I can't ignore the reality.

the Picomotor is my version of your ice cream maker. the lack of dots gives me the evidence I need to finally donate it to a better home

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#13

Post by pphysch »

jofzar wrote: post #11
jmward01 wrote: post #2

First, great system. Second, I am going to pine for an electronic version and having read the post I get it. Feel free to laugh and read the next comment. That said there are two aspects to this system that come to mind immediately: - The value of the information: This is the purpose of the dots and, I think the stated reason for the dots. - The value of the process: If you did this and didn't have the final dot info…

Imo NFC tags could be the easiest way of doing the same thing for bigger items, scan it when you use it, log it.

Or just a QR code sticker to a URL only accessible from your LAN

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#14

Post by hecanjog »

I'm ready to reorganize, there are a lot of really good ideas here! Most of all I had a similar trajectory of starting with small component drawers and now it's a real pain to find appropriate places for everything. I didn't think to try larger boxes! Makes a lot of sense. I'm curious to try some variation of the dot system too, but I think I appreciated the somewhat mundane in-between details about your setup the most.

(I would have appreciated less AI-assistance in the prose though FWIW, I'm sorry if that's annoying to say!)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#16

Post by fontain »

stickfigure wrote: post #4

Interesting, but this seems to solve the wrong problem. I already know that the ice cream maker sitting on the shelf hasn't been used in 5 years. The problem is... what if I want to make ice cream?

Determine the cost of owning the ice cream maker per year. For some people, owning something costs nothing and in fact provides value, they find comfort in owning things, used or not. For some people, owning things is a burden, a drain, and owning something unused is painful.

An ice cream maker costs maybe $200? How would you feel if you disposed of the ice cream maker and then a week later realized you wanted it?

If you want to soften the blow, don’t throw things away: give them away to someone who will use them.

I hate owning things, owning an ice cream maker that I never use would weigh on me and I would much rather spend $200 on a new ice cream maker every 5 years (that I give away after a month) than have an unused ice cream maker for 5 years.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#17

Post by dave_universetf »

ihaveajob wrote: post #7

This is neat but my OCD brain is hurting. I suspect a location based sorting, where most-recently-used boxes are near the top, or closer to your workstation, solves the same problem without the visual clutter.

This is probably just a difference in how your brain and the author's work. A variety of home organizers have told me that people mean different things when they say they want an organized space. Some people want everything precisely labeled and sorted into narrow categories, and hidden away in drawers or closets. Others want everything visible and coarser categories. Each system looks and feels very distressing to brains of the other types.

It's especially a problem for people with ADHD, because the "very sorted and hidden" mode of organizing is heavily socialized as the _only_ way to be organized, but it's also the exact opposite of how (some) ADHD brains want to operate. OTOH the very exposed and "emergent" organization that works for an ADHD brain probably is mild torture to an OCD brain :)

For myself, the sorting system in this post looks pretty ideal. All the stuff is right there where I can see it and scan for what I'm after, it explicitly allows for emergent organization where classification happens incrementally over time, and the dots thing has near zero activation energy but still gives me long-term information I can use. It's much better than an electronic or "clean" inventory system precisely because I'll never be able to consistently keep using those, whereas slapping a dot on a box, even on bad brain days I can manage that!

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#18

Post by dave_universetf »

hecanjog wrote: post #14

I'm ready to reorganize, there are a lot of really good ideas here! Most of all I had a similar trajectory of starting with small component drawers and now it's a real pain to find appropriate places for everything. I didn't think to try larger boxes! Makes a lot of sense. I'm curious to try some variation of the dot system too, but I think I appreciated the somewhat mundane in-between details about your setup the mo…

+1, the information content is nice, but the AI telltales and writing patterns were annoyingly distracting.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#19

Post by switchbak »

ihaveajob wrote: post #7

This is neat but my OCD brain is hurting. I suspect a location based sorting, where most-recently-used boxes are near the top, or closer to your workstation, solves the same problem without the visual clutter.

That's close to what I do - except I use dust. Every ten years I get rid of the ones that have enough dust to make me sneeze.

And I put them in the crawl space :)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#20

Post by switchbak »

dave_universetf wrote: post #17
ihaveajob wrote: post #7

This is neat but my OCD brain is hurting. I suspect a location based sorting, where most-recently-used boxes are near the top, or closer to your workstation, solves the same problem without the visual clutter.

This is probably just a difference in how your brain and the author's work. A variety of home organizers have told me that people mean different things when they say they want an organized space. Some people want everything precisely labeled and sorted into narrow categories, and hidden away in drawers or closets. Others want everything visible and coarser categories. Each system looks and feels very distressing to b…

> "very sorted and hidden" mode of organizing is heavily socialized as the _only_ way to be organized

In some circles perhaps. I'm more of a fan of Adam Savage's First Order Retrievability - an overly fancy term for a pretty simple concept. There's certainly large swaths of folks that adopt that vs the everything-in-a-drawer approach, especially in workplaces where otherwise it would just cause entirely too much friction for common operations.

I give myself a lot of grief for a messy workshop, but it is nice once you realize there's a lot of ways to be organized and it's a very personal process. The important part is to devote a bit of time and energy to it, and to slowly pay down the organizational debt. And to let go of the perfectionism!

At the end of the day, if someone doesn't like my open workspace style, they probably don't value working the way I do, and I'm ok with that.

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