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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

#151

Post by wwweston »

andreareina wrote: post #111
flir wrote: post #88

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…

Future availability is such an underrated feature. I buy IKEA food storage containers exactly because of this.

I wonder if how we build/cycle software would change if we stopped calling it "backward compatibility" and started calling it "future availability."

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#154

Post by plagiarist »

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?

I read an anecdote about someone using eBay as a storage service. Buy what you want, use it, then resell. The difference in the purchase and resell price is the storage fee.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#156

Post by [deleted] »

plagiarist wrote: post #154
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?

I read an anecdote about someone using eBay as a storage service. Buy what you want, use it, then resell. The difference in the purchase and resell price is the storage fee.

[deleted]

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#157

Post by eichin »

Dathuil wrote: post #113
flir wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we have a similar setup for haberdashery - white Ikea Billys, a few extra shelves, and a lot of 9l RUBs. They're a couple of inches deeper than the shelf, but that's not really a problem. Larger projects and long-term storage go in 35l's or 64l's. The 84l's tend to be too big for us - we've got one, and I hate lugging it around. That's a hell of a collection. Is there any risk of them degrading over time, as th…

I discovered recently that IKEA actually do a deeper Billy that you can order online. I've seen them as deep as the Kalax. I used to work there and never knew. Might be helpful for the overhang

if they're the ones I'm thinking of (wide, but not very tall, good for large flat things - basically map drawers but not quite that big) just be forewarned that the drawers don't fully extend. (There are mods to fix that which involve doing some drilling and grinding on the drawer slides...)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#158

Post by graypegg »

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?

> The problem is... what if I want to make ice cream?

I end up hoarding things for the same reason, and the mental gymnastics I try to play with myself (using that ice cream machine as an example) is to think of cases where I would be willing to make ice cream, but wouldn't be willing to go buy store bought ice cream as an alternative. Usually means I need to quickly go research what I think might be interesting about the thing... and then I fall short because... there's some cool ice cream recipe ideas online... and then I enjoy make the proverbial matcha gelato that weekend... and the machine goes in the packed cupboard for another 3 months.

I'm not 100% sure if that's a good or bad outcome haha. The pattern has repeated itself with any clutter that happens to enable a weekend project once a year.

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#159

Post by eichin »

sudonanohome wrote: post #38

A lazy wall of AI slop: > I was looking for something simple. Something right-sized for my scale. > Clear boxes don't have this problem. They scale. > That's not a failure. That's the system working. I wonder if there's a simple regex that could detect these. Perhaps I should ask Claude The entirety of this post could be explained in 20 tokens: 1) use transparent boxes and bags for organizing 2) track the usage with…

I was just disappointed that they didn't include a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias#/media/File:... joke (or maybe that's also a tell...)

Re: A dot a day keeps the clutter away

#160

Post by chasd00 »

flir wrote: post #88

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 have lots of boxes like these filled with various hobby stuff. I keep two boxes on my desk though, one labeled 'A' and one labeled 'B'. Any time I use something like a tool or microprocessor or cable it goes in the A box, when the A box gets too full i pour some of it into the B box. When the B box gets too full i put the contents away where they belong. It's basically like a 2 stage MRU cache of my hobbies, all the stuff i'm currently messing with is right there in the A box or, if it's been a while, in the B box. If i'm doing something new i have to get up and go get what i need from the shelf or other boxes.
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