131–140 of 175 posts
I do a similar thing for books. A lone dot on the spine means I read it carefully enough to take notes on it. I like to write commentary in the margins, so the dots help me know which books are "devalued" and which are fine to donate or loan out to others. Multiple dots are an indication I return to a book often. Each time I re-read I take notes in a different ink color and try to record the date in that ink color in…
I don't know about the dots, though. These boxes are so flimsy that I immediately know which ones are used most often by how beat up they've become in less than a year. :)
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?
Consider that it's just an ice cream maker. Few people need an ice cream maker. Few people need or even benefit from all the crap they buy in consumerist societies and pile into their houses.
You say you may want to make ice cream one day. So what? That's hardly a good basis for keeping something, especially in light of evidence to the contrary. So what if you one day want to make ice cream? So you don't make ice cream. So what Do you have to satisfy every impulse? The psycho-spiritual burden, distraction, and waste this thinking produces far outweighs some one-off use.
Maybe a friend has an ice cream maker, perhaps one he uses all the time. Ask to borrow it for those one-off cases. Or make it a social event.
As the article mentions using standardized clear bins, which really do help: In the UK I settled on Really Useful Boxes. Not their new cheaper range, the chunky straight-sided ones. Transparent, they don't go brittle in a few years (I guess they will eventually), the front-opening ones are handy if you're racking them, and you've got some guarantee you can go back and buy more in a couple of years. I wouldn't be surp…
I've switched to UTZ Rako/Euroboxes for longer term storage. I even bought a beat-up dolly so I could easily transport 60L boxes around. They stack, they're divisible (e.g. 2x30L on top of a 60L) and the smaller ones fit neatly into a KALLAX cubby. You can buy them used for cheap, if you're willing to spend an afternoon scrubbing factory dirt off them. But they're not significantly pricier than Really Useful.
There are other suppliers like Auer, who make all kinds of interesting variations like toolboxes and latching/lockable boxes, but can get really expensive. You can get insert containers for them, but same problem: no transparent lids, only generic gray unless you want to buy 100.
I've been lusting after some of the Sortimo boxes that Adam Savage recommends, but I can't justify 50-100 quid per compartment box.
As for the original article... I like the idea of dots, but I would try a gridded label with sharpie marks. Having worked in a lot of workshops and labs though, boxes are not efficient. You want a good rack/drawers for things you use all the time (tape). I do like one box per project for convenience, which is often more useful than a box with generic grouped parts. If you really need to, you can do things like cut SMD tapes for each project. This way is much easier to drop back into something you only have time for on the weekend, and it's also what we would do in hardware shops (single sorted organizer with the BOM items for a project).
I do agree about the hardware side being surprising. When I was working on electronics for work, having a 4 channel scope was indispensable. But most of the time, debugging on chip/breakpoints are enough. I switched to a 4 channel mixed signal Picoscope.
(Someone else mentioned kitchen containers. I spent some time in a professional kitchen which hooked me on Cambro-style containers, or whatever Nisbet's sell in the UK. Also standardized alu sheet pans and matching silicone mats for baking.)
I do a similar thing for books. A lone dot on the spine means I read it carefully enough to take notes on it. I like to write commentary in the margins, so the dots help me know which books are "devalued" and which are fine to donate or loan out to others. Multiple dots are an indication I return to a book often. Each time I re-read I take notes in a different ink color and try to record the date in that ink color in…
> I like to write commentary in the margins Oh man, tangent into one of my favorite library book experiences. I checked out a sci-fi book at the library. It was good I was enjoying it. Then a few chapters in, I found a previous library patron had written nit-picky notes in the margin, poking holes in the author's fictional science tech explanations. And these weren't little one-word exclamations, they were whole sent…
This was a special treat because the book itself already uses copious footnotes and cross-references from fictional characters to create a maze. And now a real person added to the effect by trying to make sense of it themselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
5 years isn't really that long though. I have things that I haven't touched in 25 years that I'm still worried I might need.
This is called hoarding.
It depends entirely on usage patterns and attitudes.
I just used a piece of material that was sitting on the shelf for at least ten and probably closer to fifteen years. I'd purchased it as an off-cut from a supplier just on a thought of "this might be useful, and it's a good deal". Carried it through two moves and never got around to using it. Suddenly it turned out to be the perfect thickness for this one customer project when the expected material didn't work — never could have predicted it. Not only that, but when I went to check how much it would cost today, I literally cannot find that particular thickness. It literally saved by butt on this job.
OTOH, I do have other materials I've used once or twice, but the needs have shifted so they're going on Craigslist for free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I like to write commentary in the margins Oh man, tangent into one of my favorite library book experiences. I checked out a sci-fi book at the library. It was good I was enjoying it. Then a few chapters in, I found a previous library patron had written nit-picky notes in the margin, poking holes in the author's fictional science tech explanations. And these weren't little one-word exclamations, they were whole sent…
I had a similar experience with a second-hand copy of House of Leaves [0]. This was a special treat because the book itself already uses copious footnotes and cross-references from fictional characters to create a maze. And now a real person added to the effect by trying to make sense of it themselves. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves