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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

#141

Post by genthree »

kasey_junk wrote: post #104
wccrawford wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly my problem. It's easy enough to say "give it away if you won't use it soon" but how do you know ? That urge might come on any time, and the act of giving it away is likely to reignite that passion. And for small things, like cables you don't often use... You never know when you'll need them. I've been telling myself I'm just going to throw them away after all, but then within a month of deciding that,…

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.

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.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#142

Post by bluGill »

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?

You should set a rule that if it isn't used yearly it goes. In the case of the ice cream maker that means you have to make ice cream once a year just so you can keep the machine.

I don't follow the above like a religion, but it is good advice. I have a collection of things my grandma made that I look at once a year just because having it gives me joy and that once a year rule means I have to look at it or get rid of it. (I don't know how to explain to my kids why they give me joy - she died long before they were born so they have no memories of her hobbies)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#143

Post by bluGill »

tshaddox wrote: post #76

For me, the hard part isn’t remembering how many times I’ve used a container or item in the last month or year. The hard part isn’t simply dedicating the time to comb through a bunch of stuff and get rid of the unused stuff.

The point is you don't have to. You instead just look at the boxes a few years latter and if at a glance you see one box with few/no dots you know it is safe so you spend just a few seconds thinking about only that box - then you move on to something else. Sure there might be more boxes you can get rid of, but you only need to do one box at a time when you have a few seconds. (or you look at the box and decide you are not ready to get rid of that so you put a dot on it making it less likely this one will come up next time you have a few seconds)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#144

Post by bluGill »

heyethan wrote: post #53
shermantanktop wrote: post #8

My low-tech solution to organizing electronic parts is to use shoeboxes, with written labels at the end, and plastic bags inside to organize the various groups of items. They stack, and I am lazy, and so I put the one I just pulled out from the middle of the stack back on top. So the ones on top are the ones I use. If they are at the bottom they don't get used much. On the other hand, I don't care which ones I use a…

[flagged]

IT is still a signal because you only need to look at things with few dots. Maybe that charger is for something that broke years ago and you can get rid of it this time. Meanwhile you don't even need to ask about the boxes of things you use often but don't think of (nor do you confuse them for the boxes of almost the same thing you never use)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#145

Post by 0xDEFACED »

every wrote: post #131
randusername wrote: post #112

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…

Sometimes the marginalia are more interesting than the work itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia

i have a truly marvelous story about interesting marginalia which this comment box is too small to contain

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#146

Post by bluGill »

noisy_boy wrote: post #122

To those saying it doesn't look good, why not make the dots like levels? Say you have only 5 colors: green, blue, orange, purple, red. 1st year: green 2nd year: replace the green dot with blue 3rd year: replace the blue dot with orange 4th year: replace the orange dot with purple 5th year: replace the purple dot with red 6th year: red + add green dot 7th year: red + replace the green dot with blue Even if you use a b…

Because you need to do something yearly which is tedious and so a task you are likely to postpone. Does it really matter if the green dot on the box is from this year or 10 years ago? The important signal is the box with the red dot hasn't been touched in 9 years so if you need some space that is a candidate for getting rid of.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#147

Post by koralatov »

flir wrote: post #110
tsak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second that. Our garage is full of their 50L boxes with the XL lid, perfectly fitting those industrial shelves. Very versatile and long lasting. Even after nearly ten years, they look pretty much the same, and we live in harsh climate near the coast.

My oldest ones (about a decade, same as you) are a touch more yellow than the ones I bought last year. I still think that, kept away from UV, they'll probably outlast me.

Same. I have one that’s about 15 years old, lived in a cupboard its whole life, and it’s slightly yellowed but still going strong.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#149

Post by purplerabbit »

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?

Something freeing to me that my wife said:

"If you get rid of clutter, there will be cases where you'll have gotten rid of something useful at that moment. It's not about avoiding that -- it's about accepting the right tradeoff between cleanliness and functionality."

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#150

Post by tshaddox »

theshrike79 wrote: post #94
tshaddox wrote: post #76

For me, the hard part isn’t remembering how many times I’ve used a container or item in the last month or year. The hard part isn’t simply dedicating the time to comb through a bunch of stuff and get rid of the unused stuff.

But wouldn't this help? You have 10 containers, slap a marker on one every time you take something out of it. 12 months later you have 2 containers that haven't been touched (zero stickers). -> 80% reduction of the amount of stuff to comb through to find unused/useless cruft.

If your decision procedure is so simple that you always throw out any container with zero dots and always keep any container with non-zero dots, then perhaps it saves a small amount of time.

But that's a pretty coarse decision procedure, both because there might be an item that's very important but gets used less than once per year and because there might be a container that is 99% full of unused stuff but happens to have 1 item that gets used once a year.

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