Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Organize Your Gear?
truffle writes "Like many geeks, I have acquired a large amount of items and gear over time, including miscellaneous hardware, cables, and such. I have books, papers, Lego, and more. I generally store most things in roughly sorted cardboard boxes, which is neither efficient nor attractive. For the non-messy geeks out there, how do you organize and store your geek stuff? Is it possible to have a clean organized grown-up home, without throwing everything away?"
I personally prefer separation of the different internal computer parts and cables into tupperware type containers. I also have a much smaller one just for all the different types of screws that can be used in a system. The tupperware gives it a very organized look, and still allows me to just throw the stuff in there in typical geek fashion -- a bonus for me.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
I have a cheap ass wardrobe from Ikea that works great. the top shelve is for hdds, keyboards and other weird shit, while I use the coat hanger rod for cables and other wiring. the bottom shelf works great for extra cases and small parts in shoe boxes.
this was actually given to me and has solved so many problems since I got it. it's cheap, but it's been a great solution.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
The only problem comes when guests arrive.
Then each pile goes into a box, which is kept in the basement until they leave.
My mom says I'm cool.
I go to the container store and buy 20 gallon plastic tubs that have the lid. I put all my stuff in there. I give it a year and if I don't dig into it I donate it.
Turns out a charity in my area had several old machines donated to them from another charity and they could use the 4 speed CD burners and old memory I had.
So store your stuff, give it a reasonable amount of time and if you don't use it, donate it. Get some good karma generated in the process.
O wait... for any techie, that would be the entire house.
Rubbermaid makes stackable tubs and various other things for organization. Once you have that in order, look to store VERTICALLY (ie - build shelves) not horizontally.
If you want great ideas, tune into TLC channel and watch a show called "Clean Sweep" were extremely cluttered people learn how to organize and redesign rooms to bring their life back in order.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I write this, as my wife throws another PC carcase I left out at my head.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
I went out and bought some cheap-assed, modular draws like these. Papers in one drawer, cables in another, etc. Stack them next to your desk and you're good to go.
And afterwards, I'll even teach you how to wipe your ass.
:)
Seriously... karma or not, it needed to be said
For some strange reason my piles of crap and boxes of who-knows-what got organized real quick soon after.
Added benefit of this organization technique is that it comes with a free "relationship" thrown in. Did I say "free"? Whoops.
John.
I've not actually got off my butt to buy one, but I thought one of those accordian files (seen being toted around by debate teams everywhere) would be perfect for storing cables.
One neatly-coiled cable per slot, and they'll never get tangled with each other.
"books, papers, Lego, and more"
Well, my kids have a toy box that was made for them by their grandfather.
It's shaped like a truck and everything. They just need to take their Bionicles apart before they put them away.
has got to be in a big pile on the floor. When you run out of floor space, that's nature's way of telling you to find a bigger apartment or get rid of some stuff. Either that, or just pile higher.
I tend to store my lego [an absurd amount, but there are people with more] in flat, clear tackle boxes I get from Walmart. $5 Canadian and you can store another couple sets of lego.
I don't own anything else.
no. i prefer job security thank you very much.
I use shelving. lots and LOTS of shelving. Two walls of the storage room in my house have rack based shelving, that shifts around as I need (not often now it's set up well, but it took a bit of using until I got used to it). One rack space has no shelving in it at all, only hooks for hanging cables. They're a life saver, and it's not only plain cables that hang there, but everything from cat5, serial, monitor cables, to mice, old joysticks, breakout boxes, scsi/ATA/whatever ribbons and all the other Long Things.
Lastly, a good set of drawers for Little Stuff. Mine are a 4x4 (others may need more) array of drawers about 6 inches wide, 4 inches high and 12 deep.
4 shelves for books, 1 for scifi, one for computer books
:))
half of the den/tv room is strewn with legos
networking equiptment on one shelf
cables on another
PCI/AGP/ISA/etc. cards on a little rack on my desk (so they stand on end, and you can see their connecters easily)
cd's on another shelf
large hardware on 2 shelves (PSU's, fans, cd/harddrives, etc)
messy, but works rather well...
(all shelves are within reach from the desk while sitting down
Am I really the only one who thinks that "Rubbermaid" sound a little... well... you know?
BE very careful of static with plastic tupperware. YOu could very easily fry your gear.
Each episode they assist a hideously disorganised family to get their stuff in order by completely remodelling and organizing two rooms.
The toughest part is when they make the owners part with roughtly 50% of their junk from said rooms. They focus more on purgeing I think, cause after all, we all probably are holding on to way too much junk.
And no, I'm never giving up my TI99/4A collection!!!!!
for various hardware (routers, hard drives, etc), i keep them in original boxes. i keep all spare wiring in old pillowcases from college.
:) you'll find old game systems stacked up (only the gamecube gets attention these days)
the neatest arrangement i have is with my ipod. i had RCA plugs installed in the car, with a switch (all flush mounted in the dash, looks factory installed) to change between the cd changer and the ipod. add that to a good subwoofer in the trunk, and you have yourself one beautiful car stereo.
avoid my bookshelves though
Regardless of every attempt of boxes, containers, etc., everything eventually ends up on the floor, under a bed, or piled in a closet.
I use gallon sealable plastic bags for everything. Everything.
I'm moving appartment and I'm finding bits and pieces all over the place (I usually keep the stuff I need in a couple of drawers). Since I cant remember putting it there I am just assuming I have no further use for it and its going out with the garbage. Simple and effective.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
There's a pretty funny article over at Something Awful today about organization. The following quote sums up my thoughts on the subject quite nicely: Basically, I'm the world's laziest obsessive-compulsive.
...and one of the many conclusions drawn from seeing what is contained in, well, a container:
Conclusion: A colony of ants has set up shop in my filing cabinet, accepting damp cigarette butts in exchange for crafted rodent accessories. Their queen enjoys writing words alphabetically. At some point in my life that I don't remember I had an intense fetish for kettle voyeur photography.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Using peg boards with the y hooks. I bought a bunch of the plastic bags with the white labeling space. Drop your cards and such into the bags, label and then hole punch and hang on the peg board. It doesn't take account for the larger pieces but its a space efficient and clean looking way of getting components out of the way.
No money, no gear.
StreetPersona
I use two things heavily:
Sterilite storage bins, and WireTech wire shelving.
For the storage bins, I make heavy use of the clear storage drawers and bins. See this page for all storage options. Quite a few places sell Sterilite.
The other huge thing is WireTech shelving. It's very heavy-duty coated steel wire shelving in chrome, white, or black, that looks great and is very strong - each shelf can support 300 pounds. It can also be organized in nearly an unlimited number of ways. Take a look at Sensible Storage's site, click "Products", and then see Shelving Kits, Custom Shelving, and Accessories. I strongly recommend checking it out. WireTech is the only type that I have found that is like this. They work great for everything from equipment rack type setups, entertainment center towers, making really complex shelving setups, or just plain old storage.
There are a bunch of different places that sell WireTech, but there is one, and as far I can tell only one, place that sells everything online: Great Ace WireTech shelving. It's actually an Ace hardware store in Chicago, but I've ordered various WireTech things from them a couple times before and I've been happy with the results.
You'd be surprised how much the right tools help with the job, even for things like storage. Good luck.
I like to spread everything out all over the place, that way I can see anything I might need once in a blue moon and not have to waste time looking in containers.
tip: just make sure you leave a small walking path, so you don't step on your things!
There is a container for everything...
I have found that the cardboard box approach works quite well, since I get a new box delivered at least once a week with new toys that will need to be stored somewhere if they arn't inside a case. In my office, I actually have piles of boxes labled with felt pen, so I know which one contains hard drives, and which one contains old cables... Every once in a while, I'll go through the boxes and find enough parts to put a computer together, then if it's not good enough for me, I sell it to a client who wants to upgrade, then sell their old computer to a computer store for a couple bucks just to get rid of it.
There is a show on TLC called "Clean Sweep." The whole idea of the show is to take someone who has amazingly disorganized and cluttered rooms, and to make their rooms organized and uncluttered. Watch a few episodes of this, and you should come up with some great ideas. I know I did, and it worked great.
Jason Lotito
Nope. Not possible.
I throw out all the packing materials, but keep all the extra cables, driver disks, replacement rubber feet, instruction manuals, disposable headphones, and other cruft in separate ziplock baggies. All sizes; the 1 Gallon freezer bags can contain a spare five-port ether hub, a DC brick, and two short cat-5s. Then I can toss the baggies into a crate without worrying about them getting too intermingled. I have dozens of clear stackable containers I use for everything, including such electronics junk. And I mean, everything. http://www.halley.cc/pix/?f=portraits/naptime
[
...enough my Mom just comes and tidies it up. I use the same method with dirty clothes. And if I'm hungry she just makes food. So why are you asking on SLashdot. Everyone has a mom don't they?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I've taken to buying a bunch of Storage contains from target, like the 4 Gallon one. I fill each with junk until it's full and then put it into Gorilla Rack shelving in the garage.
The trick is to enter into a simple text file the location of each piece of item, taking care to fill in enough detail to search for it in the text file. Each of the containers is numbered.
If I take something out of the container, it doesn't have to go back into the same one, I just move its description from one location into another.
This saves me from the heartache of trying to sort stuff. Sure, I keep cables and stuff like that sorted, because I have so many of them. But... for those odds and sods, it makes more sense to just put them in any old box, and keep track of them with a text file.
I put it all in a big box that retracts into the wall, so I can quickly hide it when girls come over. Wouldn't want my chances to be killed by the sight of that Commodore 64-powered particle accelerator, now would I?
The coolest voice ever.
I'm at college, and I have a tendency to store everything. I have every scrap of paper that's school related, even down to napkins with little scrap work done on them.
To sort everything out, I make use of the plastic storage boxes that you can find at Wal-Mart. They stack nicely and hold a lot of paper that I might need one day, but doesn't come in handy now. For shelf space, I have several of the Plano utility shelves. They snap together very easily and will hold a good bit of weight (they come in several different types). With stuff on a shelf, it's not taking up valuable floor space, but is making use of the wall space up near the ceiling that wouldn't ordinarily get used. Don't be afraid to drop a little money on some plastic storage stuff. It's worth it (unless you have a good supply of lumber already and can build your own (more permanent) shelves).
Barn.
I have a two story barn FULL of junk ranging from part of an AS400 System to macintosh.
The dingo ate my sig.
"Is it possible to have a clean organized grown-up home, without throwing everything away?"
No. No, it is not. Just ask my wife about the morse code transceiver in the bathroom linen closet.
Throw it all away. The 'it might come in handy one day' never happens, until you throw it that is. And if you do need it, you can go buy a new one, helping the economy and giving yourself a 'retail boost' in one foul swoop.
all the new tissues in one neat pile and all the used ones in another neat one.
- You have regular sex (vasectomy is suggested in these cases - no, it doesn't hurt you wussies)
- your wife will make sure all of your 'junk' (yes, we all know it is) is in the basement or the attic - where it's definitely out of sight.
- You get kids (yes, they are fun)
- You get a housekeeper (ok, help with houskeeping)
- You get a friend for life
Of course, some of the key points are based on finding the right man/woman - which I guess means cleaning your place up."I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
They work for everything form camping gear to tools, to extra cables. Plus you can easily see what's inside without having to move a pile of cardboard boxes, open them and then kick yourself for not writing the contents on the outside with a black magic marker.
Never pet a burning dog.
*Looks around*
...no.
When my wife made me clean up my bins b/c they were so nasty this is what we did.
.02$
I seperated everything into functional groups (networking cables and hardware, audio cables, etc, misc. gadgets, etc..) We went to staples or similar and got shallow see through bins. The bins are only about 6 inches deep. I also got a bunch of cable ties and neatly tied all the wires. that was the biggest help. Now we have an overhead area in the hall closet where I have my 4 bins stacked. For most common things like patch cables I can usually just reach in and grab a cable. For bigger projects I can get the bin down. Keep a package of ties in each bin to remind you to retie cables.
+
I decided that I'd sort my stuff by room. this works effectively with a two bedroom apartment or larger. Basically, all of the computer stuff not necessary for the entertainment center is in the second bedroom. The living room/dining room/kitchen area is predominately off-limits to computer stuff. I have a wireless access point for use with the occasional laptop, which is the only thing that I'll bring into the living room. Some toys are kept in the closet in the bedroom, some are kept in the computer room, depending on application.
The dining room is where I keep my drumset, and the kitchen is pretty much just kitchen stuff. The entertainment center at my place is a bit strange, since it's a doored server cabinet with the AV gear and the computer for multimedia applications (rackmounted). Since there's a door on it, it tends to not spill out into the room too bad most of the time.
The computer room is a perpetual mess, but that's okay, since I can shut it off from the rest of the apartment, and my geeky friends don't care that they have to move a stack of motherboards in order to sit down. It doesn't spread out of there much though.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I think velcro cable ties are a godsend for orginizing computer work space. Like some people mentioned, large plastic containers work well but go for the CLEAR ones so you can see what's in them before opening them up. You can then stack them in a closet or something. Usually I try to download manuals as PDF of save product web pages into a manuals folder, then I can toss the paper version. If I feel the item has high resale value I might save the manual and box in the basement. In the end, throwing as much as you can into the trash is probably your best bet for an organized space. Most of us would agree that we're better organizing code then our workspace.
My books are by subject, my hard drives by Filesystem Heirarchy Standard. Everything else is by relative amount of decomposition.
C|N>K
For storing wires, I find that a closet is the best. Wrap the cables around the closet pole (or whatever it is called). When you don't need them, just push them to the end, so they take little space. When you need the cable, spread them on the pole and you can choose your cable with little hassle. I think a "tie" rack will be excellent for this too.
If you only have a wall, place some _big_ nails on it, and wrap the cables around it. It is way easier to find the cable you are looking for this way.
Are you an idiot? Round hole - square peg - me no thinky it fits.
Depending on what exactly you are storing. You have a decent size closet you could buy or make a wooden closet that is about 3-4 feet deep and stick a rack frame in there and rackmount your boxes that you dont need laying around but want access to. Have the little cable oranizers for your in use cables that are properly placed. Then normal box computers can be set at the lower half. On the sides you can store in either custom wood based slots.. keyboards, drives or whatever. Make another one and have shelves where you can use rubbermaid drawers or tubs. You can use this method and easily turn a 12 computer room into a 1 access computer office nice spacey and clean. The rest is hidden behind two friendly sized closets.
I took the bold and unpopular move of getting rid of everything I didn't really need. It was rough and I wouldn't really have done it if I wasn't moving to a much smaller place but the fact of the matter is that most of the stuff you have around "just in case" is never actually going to be useful. 2 gig SCSI drive when I haven't owned a computer with a SCSI card for 2 years? Gone. Boxes for gear costing under $20? Gone. Quick reference card for my router? Didn't need it when I set it up 3 years ago, don't need it now. Receipt and warrantee info for something that's been out of warrantee for 2 years? Into the shredder.
I highly recommend a paper shredder BTW, less because I'm worried about the security of my trash and more for processing mail I don't need so that you don't end up with those piles of envelopes that are 99% credit card apps and that one bill you actually need.
The hardest part for me was getting rid of books, I've never done that in my life. When going through them though I found a suprising number that not only had I only read once, I didn't even really like them. Got a few books I really wanted instead of 50 I hated from my local used bookstore.
For things that I actually do need to store I use white plastic crates with hinged lids. They stack well, keep dust out and you can label them with a dry-erase marker.
Build a garage! If you start building the platform for the "attic" of the garage as soon as it's finished you'll have a place to move your stuff once your spouse claims the garage floor-area. Keep the wires between the first set of trusses, keep the old components (mice etc.) in the second truss bay. (Taking monitors up and down isn't fun.)
The best part for me is that she never sees the piles of stuff, so it's "OK"
I found some storage units that consist of clear plastic drawers. I find this very helpful in determining what is in a particular drawer before searching through it.
Like the original poster, my previous system was just a collection of small cardboard boxes. It took forever to find anything. The clear plastic is a great improvement.
Proverbs 21:19
My mother does all my organizing for me, you insensitive clod!
You could get a bunch of Rubermaid containers, or some of those plastic shelving systems.
If all else fails, get yourself a bunch of identical boxes, like banker's boxes, and label them.
Whatever you do, if the containment system can be kept neat, the collections won't appear to be junk."I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
So, my room is still awfully messy. Actually I gotta condo
in down town are in Tokyo to stow all gears and books and
comics more thean 10 years ago. It's already over-capacitied,
although I'm still living alone. hmm
That's the reason why I'm one of the fool hoping stock
market to regain its boom in 90's.
True organization can only be had with extreme discipline:) That being said...
Maximum PC had a two page dealy on getting a tackle box for your PC needs. It's been working great for me. At the office and at home, I tend to be a bit of a maniac when it comes having things in their place, so here is what I can pass on:
1. Don't loose items sitting out. Just put them away in a place that makes sense. Categorize and place-- even if it means the broadest category ever. At least you'll remember where you put it ("Oh yeah, I put that with the other unrelated
thing because I figured...").
2. Don't let other people touch your stuff. Plain and simple. Get pissed and let them know it's your territory. You didn't spend all of that time organizing to have someone else crap it all up.
3. Buy a couple of cheap plastic file cabinets. The ones that you see at Target are great for this stuff. Use them for parts, parts and more parts!
4. Keep stuff. I use the spindles that CD-R's come on and label them according to their category (OS, UTIL, GAMES).
5. Visit your hardware store. Any gearhead will find a ton of great ways to organize tools, screws, etc. I personally love the vitamin organizer jobbies that you can keep smaller screws, shunts, etc. in.
and that's all.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Better yet, how does everyone handle printouts? Thousands of pages of printouts. With the abundance of manuals, how-tos and books online for everything from MySQL and Zope to Python to anything from Safari how does anyone organize the huge stacks of printouts that can accumulate if one has the audacity to print these out instead of destroying their eyes trying to read them on the screen?
I've got a plastic thing that goes under my bed. All my computery extra stuff that doesn't go on my desk goes in there. When it's time to work with the hardwares I open 'er up.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
There are these plastic, resealable bins that you place the stuff you want organized into. Every week these bins are collected by an organization squad to be stored. At any time you can collect your stuff from the organization depot. Just look for a cloud of seagulls over an area with a dubious smell and you will know an organization depot is nearby where you can reclaim your goods.
Is it possible to have a clean organized grown-up home, without throwing everything away?"
Leave out "grown-up" and then it's probably possible. For me, part of being a geek is retaining a child-like interest in the world: still playing with toys, still using imagination. No matter how old I get, there will always be a drawer full of yo-yos at my house!
If you can't find it, just go buy another one. Magically the missing item will show up and now you have a backup!
Seriously, I use a lot of small storage drawers for nuts, bolts, screws, connectors... Have serveral wall mounted shelves (Lowes, Home Depot) for storing keyboards, flat boxes, switches, hubs -- general "flat" things. I generally try to get rid of old cases / parts to keep the WAF positive.
Get a man-purse?
I used to be pretty much the same, 'til I realised it was mostly just junk that I couldn't quite bring myself to throw away. Or which I thought I might one day find a use for, or it might one day be a valuable collectors item or conversation piece or some crap like that. Throw all this stuff away! Just keep the stuff with true sentimental value.
Non-messy geek?.... The mother of all oxymorons....
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
http://www.ikea-usa.com/
Go to an IKEA store near you. The have awesome stuff that is cheap. Most of it is geared towards apartment dwellers and those with not a lot of space. They have dozens of sample rooms setup in their store to give you ideas.
How the heck does one occupy an apartment or efficency without shopping at IKEA?!
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
but organized like Klinger from M.A.S.H. did (IDE cables, for example, are stored under "W" for "Wires")
This way, it's organized, but only I know where everything is. Keeps nosey hands out of it.
Hope this helps.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
As I count myself as a member of the Hardware Geek Guild I feel your pain. When we moved into our apartment I built a unit out of timber stock that contained ten box files mounted horizontally. Box files make great (cheap) storage boxes and the eventual result is reasonably neat.
Cables are sorted into different types and then stored in supermarket carrier bags behind the cupboards. Use a permanent marker to write the cable type on the bag.
Books are stored on the bookshelves (duh!!)
Consider rack mounting your gear, it avoids various boxes all over the place and keeps the cable runs short.
One final note that may be of use for those geeks who live with a significant other. Store all your stuff in one place and then hide it behind a pair of double doors / cupboard fronts / curtains. This will help reserve the peace.
Ed Almos
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
There is a great service for this, and it's free!
At home, I have this big grey box, with a lid and handy wheels, for easy transport. Everything goes in there and every mondays and thursdays a truck comes and picks it up, they even do all the hauling for you, no hassle. Although I haven't tried retrieving anything, I'm sure this is equally easy. They told me every town has this nowadays.
I store the few things I need beside me on the street, where I sit and yarn. BTW, have you seen my cool new spinning-wheel
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Cheap, stackable, and dustproof.
p la y.asp?id=150
You can also use bar codes to database the contents.
http://www.akro-mils.com/home_office/coupon_dis
i was driving around town one weekend looking at the yardsales, and i spotted one of those things that you use in offices, not exactly a desk but similar, usually you will see them with a printer, fax, copier, and many reams of paper and other office supplys on it & in it, it is not as wide from front to back as a desk but it is about twice as long, with drawers on each end and shelves in the middle, best 30 dollars i spent on used furnature ever!!!
...throw everything into one big ass box...
if electricity is created by electrons, is morality created by morons?
Next on "Ask Slashdot":
How do you wipe your ass? Folded toliet paper or wadded?
1) Think before getting new junk. Yeah, that old Mac SE might look tempting for $10 at a garage sale, but really, after you boot it up once or twice, what are you going to use it for? This applies to new things, too...
2) Refactor, Refactor, Refactor... in this case, be relentless in getting rid of stuff you don't use. And don't sweat getting rid of something you *might* need someday... the value of a clutter free life is much greater than the misc. computer cable you might need to buy again.
3) For the stuff you do need, organize it just like your file system. Large plastic containers (computer cables) can hold smaller plastic containers (categories of cables)...
4) This is something that seems to come naturally for the ladies, but if you don't use something very often but can't bear to get rid of it, get it out of your normal workspace. Find some storage in the basement or closet and keep your day to day workspace as clutter free as possible.
"Stuff" doesn't make you happy, it just accretes around you. It's crap, you shouldn't bother buying it in the first place, but since you have, get rid of it when you're done with it.
You think you might need it next week, or next month, or maybe next year? You may think it's worth something... Believe me, it isn't and you won't. It's just shit that'll just clutter up your life.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I organize my "gear" with a jockstrap.
Organizing your stuff takes a long time to actually get to the point where you stick with it. What you have to do is analyze the stuff to space ratio and minimize the stuff as best you can to get started:
Start with your desk. As a geek, that's where you spend most of your time anyway, so the rest of the space doesn't really matter. Go through the crap on your desk and figure out what needs to be there. Create a filing system (I use a set of 10 clipboards, 4 notebooks, and a single binder for my critical stuff) and stick with it. The more complicated the better, because you'll start to realize that it's more efficient to just do without than to deal with trying to file the next document you have. Store the system just out of reach of your desk, to make sure you have even less incentive to file it. Also, make sure you have a large garbage can or can easily reach the window (try to get a window on a side of the building that never sees the sun)
Write small. I use a 0.3mm mechanical pencil, and can get between 1500 and 2000 words on a single page of 8.5*11. This helps in two ways: Decreases the number of papers you need for a given document, and makes it much easier to ruin it by dropping Easy Mac on it. To avoid this last problem if necessary, simply make sure to use the filing system mentioned above.
Become an alcoholic. Drink heavily at your desk. The more often you knock a beer over on your stuff, the more often you'll get rid of stuff that you no longer need. Nothing important will be destroyed, because that stuff will be filed as above. Also, if you're plastered, you won't notice how much of a craphole you actually live in.
Moving on from the desk, minimize the space you need in your apartment. As a geek, all you need is your desk, some degree of bookshelf, a futon, and a microwave. If you're an especially talented geek, just pull the futon up to your desk and you can eliminate the need for a chair. Resist the temptation to use the fridge in the kitchen, as you will forget the stuff you put in there until it's too late (as an aside, this fridge can generally be unplugged and used for extra storage for your other stuff. Same with the stove).
Take note of all of your extra space and the stuff you have. Rank it all by how cool it is and by how often you actually play with it. Find a retail store and get all of their old empty boxes you can. Fill these with your stuff, filing it carefully into such unused rooms in the house as the kitchen, bedroom, dining room, and the shower in the bathroom. You really don't need any of these. Organize it all compulsively, making notes of where everything is. Put these notes into the filing system. Resist the urge to get rubbermaid containers, as the next time you burn the popcorn the sprinkler system will come on and relieve you of the storage problem.
Some call it 'the floor.'
What does "organised" mean? I have never seen this "organisation".
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
I recently attached RFID tags to everything I own. I took a digital photograph, and entered each item into an object oriented database.
Now, I look up my stuff in the database, download the RFID ID into the reader, and wander aimlessly around the house until my RFID reader starts beeping.
No really, I am not kidding, I swear...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Anish says:
lol you should tell them how u do things
The Devellish Good JamJar says:
how do I do things?
Anish says:
I leave bits of antique hardware amongst a random screws and bits scattered around here n there so that the cat can choke on it.
The Devellish Good JamJar says:
what are you trying to say?
The Devellish Good JamJar says:
My cat has not choked on that
Anish says:
are u sure
Anish says:
once gary thought i was poking your cat with a screwdriver
The Devellish Good JamJar says:
and the hardware isn't that antique
The Devellish Good JamJar says:
I love the sparcstation
Anish says:
have u never impaled ure feet on the spikes from sum old microship?
Anish says:
when i sleep on ure floor i bang my head on ure sparc a lot
For the stuff I use most often, I went out and got a bunch of 3-drawer plastic cabinets. They were about $20 CDN each, and come with wheels so you can still move them around easily when the heavier things are stored. I use one to hold my printer, and store video, audio, and other miscellaneous cables. I use another one to store reference books, and other miscellaneous parts. The third set of drawers is out in my living room, where I keep my gamecube stuff in one drawer, PS2 stuff in another drawer, and miscellaneous gaming cables in the third.
I find drawers have the advantage over tubs and other containers in that there are multiple drawers to a cabinet so you can better organize things. They're cheap, lightweight, durable, and won't chip/dry out like wooden drawers will.
On another note, the best place for stacks of paper is a filing cabinet with tabbed folders. The floor just doesn't sort my phone bills as well as I thought it would.
Organize your gear just like a computer: usually I store things in "stacks" depending on level of importance and frequency of use. The location of these items is then stored in my memory. I have some stacks for manuals, some for mice (I have about 20 tangled up together), AOL discs, printed outs I'll never read, dirty snack plates, and the list goes on. I'm probably going to upgrade my organizational process to use piles instead of stacks to accommodate more items. I think piles have a wider base and are more structurally sound. My system isn't 100% foolproof -- sometimes a memory errors occur and I lose the address of a given item. I also have bugs in the snack leftovers heap. After a late night I even trip over these stacks causing a massive widescale crash. Hey, the system isn't perfect but it works for me.
On the other hand, it does mean you tend to make sure you get in the ahbit of putting your own stuff away.
fume
Rich
I deposit my hardware in an online repository called EBAY. I then get a ticket stub called money in exchange. If I ever want to get my hardware back I then give back some money to ebay and it arrives in about a week.
The internet is amazing. I don't have to store junk around the house anymore. I just keep it online.
Frankly, I prefer Rubbermaid. I hate those tupperware parties. Sitting at someone else's house for 2 or 3 hours, listening to everyone rave about tupperware? It's pointless.
Rubbermaid is the answer. Walk into Target, Wal-Mart, etc, bada-bing. No multi-level marketing.
-- No sig for you!
every couple of months just through some things away.
Look up the work hoarding on google. The inability to part with useless items is an obsessive-compulsive disorder that should be treated by a professional.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Queer Eye for the Computer Guy
I use those little plastic tubes that came with rolls of film for cameras to put case/board screws. It's pretty good because it doesn't take too much room and can hold quite a number of screws.
On the same principle I use the plastic covers that comes with cd spindles (the 50 ones) to put old memory, mobo and case face plates. Just don't forget to put the memory on anti-static paper beofre hand.
Old mobo cases are good to store manuals, driver disks/cds and old pci, agp and mother boards. Just put the manuals and disks/cds in one and the pc parts in another. Then you can put them piled up under the bed or on the top shelf of closet.
I'm still trying to find a solution for old hds, cdroms and power supply... Thei are all piled on the bookcase along with the books. Anyhow, I don't have that much stuff so this works out ok for me.
Those big entertainment centers with the deep shelves make great storage. Put two or three in your office and it will become more pleasantly dark too.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
First, let me point out that this is not anything particular to geeks; some people simply have trouble throwing stuff away.
... :)
Second, no storage solution by itself will succeed in the long run; retained junk will increase to fill any available storage space. It's like hard drives, except that you don't have the option of swapping out your old basement/garage and putting in a bigger one.
Third, storing old stuff is not really 'free'. There are costs in terms of messiness, increased difficulty of finding what you want, and lost storage space for stuff that might matter more than your 10-year-old computer power supply.
Fourth, seriously consider the replacement cost of any item you intend to store. I've seen fully operational pentium PCs selling for under $50 in used PC stores; when you need an old part, just buy one and cannibalize it to your heart's content.
I do wish I could practice what I preach though
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Use old glass jars with metal screw on lids. Affix the lids to any low ceiling(basement); a couple of sheetrock screws will work just fine. Then you can fill the jars with anything you like; screws, nails, RJ45 jacks, etc. and screw them to the ceiling.
SINARS is not a recursive sig
Q: Is it possible to have a clean organized grown-up home, without throwing everything away?
A: Yes
Q: Is it possible to have a clean organized grown-up home, without throwing anything away?
A: No
One big pile. Time to move on.
my apartment always looks as if a P4 and and Athlon have just fought a very *bloody* fight to the death.
my living room has 4 computer cases (2 completely empty), 3 dead power supplies, an assortment of old vid cards, nics, and sound cards strewn about the floor.
surprisingly i have managed to get a *few* women back to my place( i know it's a shock to me too). One almost got a concussion when she laid back on the couch only to smack her head on a dead PSU under the pillow.
she hasn't been back.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
Basically, there's a box of drives, a box of cards, a box of cables, and a box of miscellaneous crap.
That's all well and good, now I just need a system to organize these thousands of CDRs I've burned over the last 5 years. What a mess.
There are ESD bins that you can buy for static sensitive stuff. Things like screws and such don't need that protection though.
What the hell was that? I have a cold, and am extremely hopped up on Sudafed--please be more coherent. You almost gave me a bad trip, "Mr. gotw," if that really is your real name.
Big f'in desk.
I make my own shelves and desks - wood is cheap, and nobody makes proper sized work surfaces anymore - think three computers, an oscilloscope, test gear, etc. All you need is some MDF and then a lexan or glass sheet for a top.
Toolboxes are great - handles, portable, and tough. Just label them. Walmart often has them for below $10. As others mentioned, tupperware containers are great - my last two moves have been with nothing but large tupperware containers and they stack nicely when you don't need them.
Biggest tip: Give everything you own a home. It's when things don't have a set spot that disaster areas happen.
..don't panic
and piles, loosly organized with my "recently used documents" near the top. unless they've slid off onto the floor.
Use the Lego to build a closet organizer.
Buy it when you need it.
Essentially you're renting storage space at somebody else's house. With any luck, when you buy it back either it'll be cheaper or you'll get something newer & better.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
I use my old motherboard boxes mostly. they usually have some foam padding, as well as those static resistant bags. I also keep those static resistant bags from the various peices of hardware I have bought. then just stack the boxes in a closet or under the bed.
really, any boxes will do. why is this question posted? just go to kmart/walmart/your favorite local general store and buy plastic stackables or something. you don't need a nerds opinion. what do you want, some tricked out, modded storage boxen?
save me jeebus.
However, I stick with clear storage (although it's not as pretty, when people are looking at the stuff inside, but it doesn't look that disorganized, as I stick with smaller containers, so you just see the repetition of 18qt containers.)
Unfortunately, the 18qt containers are just a shade too large to fit 3 wide on a 36" shelf. [it's a press fit, and the middle one goes in last]. As for the Wire Tech shelves, I use the same, and have consolidated multiple sets to get better shelf density. [I've been collecting them at Target when there are sales...although they don't tend to have the 24x48 ones anymore]
Anyway, one of the important things to consider is what the size of the items you're looking to store, and the bulkiness. To put things into perspective, the 18qt containers fit the parts for a rebel blocade runner with room to spare, and it's a damned tight fit for the imperial star destroyer.
But I find that with too large of containers, I'm in no better situation then when I started for computer parts -- using the 18qts, I have one each for scsi cables, power cables, audio/visual, mice and peripherals, internal drives, internal cables, misc. cards, etc. I have 24 bins crammed into 18"x36" shelving [8 shelves], and I have another set of shelves for random computers and larger stuff.
I've also gone to the trouble of labelling the bins, so there's no confusion -- I highly suggest Brother P-Touch, especially the 3/4" TZ tapes, as you get the most color choices [I use bright yellow]. Although the computer printer one lets you print the most varied stuff, for organization, you just want to be able to grab it and get a label, and the ones with the built in keyboard do better for that. I've also labeled power bricks, so I have some clue what they're for [both stored, and when I need to pull something to free up a plug on the power strip, so the ones in use, as well]
Oh, and for some reason, all of my home improvement projects seem to involve security [replacing doors], or adding shelving. I've also adapted the crawl space that's accessed from my basement so I have an extra 16' x 4' of storage that takes the long term storage, which I keep in the 70qt containers [stacked two high, and two deep, so I could fit lots more, if need be, but I need to better organize, so I don't have to pull out 5+ of 'em next year when I'm searching for halloween stuff again]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
But what really helps is keeping it in the laundry room, next to the server, in the ugliest part of the house. There are boxes, dead power supplies and a couple hundred Microcenter (east coast for "Fry's") bags wadded up and scattered about it.
The rest of the house is immaculate. Of course, having a roommate with just-below-worrisome OCD-style cleaning habits helps quite a bit (he's been known to get drunk and clean my other roommate's room without telling him). But we have an unspoken compact about the server area, and everything's fine so far -- although he did just buy a worryingly large kitchen knife set.
Anyway, that's my advice. We don't fight the disorder -- in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics. But we keep it in one place, and it makes it tolerable.
Milk crates.
The true sign of hopeless geekdom.
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
A 4-drawer plastic storage unit from WalMart for storing printer stuff. A drawer each for ink carts, plain paper, photo paper, and labels.
Another slightly smaller one for thin manuals and warranty info; never know when you might need them.
A multi-drawer container (like the ones you store nuts and bolts in) for small parts like cable ties, rails, nuts and bolts, etc..
An old used chest-of-drawers for larger parts (stored in their anti-static bags), CDs, larger cables, larger manuals, hard drives, old motherboards, etc..
A table behind me for old cases, monitors, and printers; the plastic storage units mentioned above are under it, too.
Yeah, it's a total mess. I never throw away anything I think I may use again, but I work on systems for friends and family, so I need all those spare parts!
The best solution is e-bay; if you're anything like me, you probably store things for years and years without ever using them once, in the hope that one day you might wanna tinker with 'em.
However, almost anything you're likely to have will be on sale on e-bay, and not only that it generates cash for you in the interim, but if you're ever in the future likely to want that obscure thing you once had, then all you gotta do is search e-bay.
It will save you not only cash, but also valuable domestic space, and in the future everything will probably be cheaper anyway.
Make a list of all the things you haven't used in the past 6 months, then search for each on e-bay, if they're available, sell 'em, if they're hard to find for three weeks running and you really wanna keep 'em, then keep 'em.
I don't. I can loose a small aircraft carrier in this dump...
Hate me!
You can find these in any army/navy surplus store, usually for under $20. The nice thing about these is that they're made out of steel and have gasket-lined lids, which render them pretty much impervious to any kind of spill or drop (perfect for LAN parties/transport in winter). I usually just throw them in the trunk of my car and go.
I use a 1-inch artillery shell box for the storage of cables, spare cards, peripherals, and the like. and a 50-calibur shell box as a toolbox/doctor's bag.
I've got a plano tackle box that I use for all the various screws(thread type and head style), jumpers, CMOS batteries, Motherboard standoffs, heatsink goop, slot fillers and all those other little things you might need but can never find.
Stanley Vidmar The military uses these for component and tool storage. Each shelf can hold up to 400 lbs fully extended. Drool.
"You do not own possessions, possessions own you."
Seriously, if you have something that you've had for over 3yrs and never used in that time, get rid of it. That should make the "stuff" easier to manage.
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Really amazing retro tech... can be made with just about any material imaginable, from wood to glass, to metal, to plastic, to pressboard, to carbon composites.
Plastic containers with lids work pretty well too, but there's nothing like shelving.
Organise? You can organise all of those? Oh my, why didn't I never thought in that...
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Keep this in mind while developing your system.
Q: What do boats and kids have in common?
A: They're the most fun when they belong to someone else
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
1. Check the stuff you have lying around
2. Put the stuff that you won't be needing for some time in the closet (there's always room in the closet)
3. Check if you have anything you need in the closet and take it out while you're at it
4. Tidy up the stuff that's left
5. Repeat when messy
-- Everybody has a sig but me...
... the little lady will find a place for your stuff. :)
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
The useless things I can find in there boggle the mind. A Softlanding Linux System Colorado tape the lable says 0.99pl13. Some Red Hat 4.1 CDs, and a folder containing System 7 floppies. I think I have an NT 3.51 disk, too. A TI Extensa laptop, and a 5300CS Powerbook! It actually works! A Pentium 133 dual motherboard, and a bag full of 72 pin 80ns simms. A 386DX-33 microprocessor. A Cisco 700 series ISDN router, stacked on top of a couple of CG6 framebuffers. There's that Sun type-4 keyboard I was looking for. Too bad my IPX died. Then there's the SE-30 I never got around to turning into a fishtank. Crap and more crap.
I get these five gay guys to come in and organize it for me, as an added bonus they ridicule my pr0n collection.
sic transit gloria mundi
How do I make my bed?
How do I brush my teeth?
How do I dress myself?
What do other Slashdotters use that roll of paper next to every toilet for?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I have taken all of my "junk" and consolidated it into one big box. Some people call it a basement.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Metropolitan wire shelving. Expensive but most surplus houses have it from dot bomb's and other casualties of the business cycle. Each shelf can hold up to 500lbs and can be equipped with drawers etc. Best of all wheels are available so you can move the shelves around easily.
IKEA
i actually use old computer cases to toss spare parts into. i mean who is seriously using that old 486. do you realize how much dead space is in one of those things?!
oh right, and of course motherboard boxes are great for storing manuals, warranties, cabling, misc. screws, pci cards, etc. thanks for not packaging your MBs and shipping them off in newspaper, asus!
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
I had the same problem for a while. I had accumulated some five or six boxes of stuff that I moved three times even though I hadn't opened most of them since they were first packed. After the third move I consolidated down to only two boxes. After I got married the stuff was some of the first to go when my wife and I moved in together :) The point is that it's easy to convince yourself that you need things that you really won't miss. (and for all of you that think I'm a complete wimp, in exchange for my boxes she had to donate five bags of old clothes to charity)
-= alphaFlight =-
I actually just store all my items in my closet, in boxes... Usually if I purchase an item like a router I'd keep the little box that comes with it to stick things in like screws or cables.. HDD's fit nicely into those boxes, then I store those boxes in larger boxes. Those boxes are stored neatly in my closet kinda tilted off of the wall so I have easy access. Also the stuff that I don't frequently require access to is just stored in my attic.
When horizontal space is at a premium, do what /.ers have testified above. Transparent
most downtowns do - stack em up - and as many
wise
bins also helps a bit.
I have been using MediaChest to keep track of my dvds, games, cds, and books. It works pretty well and also supports group features and sharing.
My DVD and Game Collection Tracking L
I take all of the different sized screws, jumpers, adapters, etc and separate them out using a fly-fishing-like tacklebox. It's a 1 level, clear plastic box with about 20 separate compartments to keep all the screws & bits separated. It's a start.
I bought an old wooden dresser from our local Zen Buddhist Temple's annual yard sale for $30. It has tons of differently sized drawers I use to sort my spare computer junk as well as other infrequently useful knick-knacks that I want to save. Keeps everything concealled and the wood dresser looks decent in the office/library...
Sorry, but you can't have a "grown-up" home if you still play with legos.
Lots of small shoebox-sized cardboard boxes and a sharpie. A couple larger boxes, too. Organize, label and stack.
I know, I know, just what you'd expect a Buddhist to say. I have too much junk around, and what I do to get it organized is to do triage. Do I really need this? If not, it goes. Have I used this in the last six months? No? Out it goes.
My wife has a set of stacking drawers in a closet, which were pretty cheap, and we put stuff we can't toss in those. But there's probably someone who can use that boat anchor computer you're tripping over every day on the way to the bathroom, so find them and give it to them, and enjoy the extra floor space!
You're never going to use that crap again. And even if you wanted to, you won't be able to find it when you need it.
What was the last law that benefited people but not corporations?
Buy several old (cheap) cars. Park them on your (neighbours) lawn. Put everything in those.
(one million rednecks can't be wrong)
Not a troll - My solution is simple (although unintentional) - just move every few years, then throw away all the useless junk you have lying about. The simple anti-packrat rule is, if you havent used/looked at something in a year, you probably don't need it anyway and should get rid of it.
1) DEVELOP STORAGE AREAS.
You'll need some place to KEEP the stuff that you want to store. It could be an attic, it could be shelves in the garage, it could be wherever you happen to have room. Here's a couple of quick thoughts - Divide your storage needs into LONG TERM and SHORT TERM useage. LONG TERM gear that needs to be stored can be put in out of the way places, like the attic, garage, under the bed. SHORT TERM usage should be kept close to where you need to work. This is where you'd store crucial stuff - cords, extra batteries for that cordless mouse, whatever.
Once you've identified your STORAGE areas, you'll be better prepared to deal with what kinds of METHODS you'll use to store stuff in those areas. (If you're going to store stuff under your bed, you can't use boxes that are too big to fit!)
2) USE A STAGING AREA.
We see this all the time on Clean Sweep. For those of you who haven't see it, they take all of their stuff that needs to be organized, and RE-PILE it into smaller piles - Keep, Sell, Throw Away. You can do the same kind of thing. Decide what gear goes into LONG term storage, SHORT term storage, whatever.
3) STORAGE METHODS.
Here's where most people jump to - but if they don't consider the first two options of WHERE to store stuff, and WHAT to store, they'll end up wasting a lot of time.
CHEAP options (so you can spend more money on gear):
- if you're going to use cardboard boxes, go to your local grocery store, and get some BANANA boxes. They're large, they're sturdy, they're free, they have handles, and they're all the same size. They're excellent for storing bigger items. You could probably fit an mid-range sized server in one of them!
- if you are looking for good ways to store small items for free in a small space - go to BURGER KING. Ask if you can have a bunch of their PICKLE BUCKETS. Burger King uses 5 gallon plastic buckets to ship their pickles. Get 5 of them. (they shouldn't charge you a cent if you ask nicely) Next, cut off the BOTTOM 4 or 5 inches of 4 of the buckets... and then use some cardboard to make subdivisions inside of each one (like the inside of a wine box). Then, those bucket bottoms will STACK INSIDE of the fifth bucket - and you'll be amazed how much STUFF you can store. Perfect for Legos.
A suggestion: wash those pickle buckets REALLY WELL with bleach - and if you can, let them sit in the sun's UV rays - it will really help get rid of the vinegar smell.
Hope those thoughts help!
G.B.Y.L.B.T., PastorEd
I use a chest of drawers, you know, the kind you usually put your clothes in.
Thanks to an ingenious suggestion from my fiancee, I store my various computer cables in the many pockets of a hang-on-the-back-of-the-closet-door style shoe organizer. It works beautifully.
Ever wonder why you have all that crap?
It's all out there. Lego, books, etc. Old computers and everything. Fuck your private museum, and the clutter that goes along with it.
I took all my out of date - but still valuable - books to the Library. They were grateful, and who knows how many future geeks will benefit from my old Linux and Cisco admin books?!
All those Apple ]['s, Macs and C 64's ain't worth a hill o' beans. Lose 'em. There's a reason why you are the only one who picked them up - they're useless. NEAT-O, but utterly useless.
Make room within your apartment, and YOURSELF for better, more valuable information and maybe - just MAYBE, you'll set yourself free from whatever it is that's been keeping you from getting a date.
It's a vicious cycle: No date, stay home and eat pizza and fiddle with VIC-20. Get fatter, so chance of date decreases, self-image goes down, fewer dates (fewer reasons to go out of the house period), more pizza, more VIC-20s, fewer dates, more pizza, more Amigas, and so on.
WHY?! Because you're a geek? Get a damned GEEK PRIDE tattoo! Hell, get the Apple I schematic tattooed as a swingin' back-piece! A portrait of a PPC Amiga 4000! A friggin' Data General if it makes you happy.
Just. Let. It. Go!
To further continue the pissing match... I have a version of this made by SAFCO that says it holds 1250 lbs per shelf, but I'm not sure I totally believe it. The individual wires that make up the shelves start to stress after a couple hundred pounds, but I'm not distributing the load very well. I currently have Three workstations and a very heavy color laserjet on this unit. The picture is from before I had the printer.
I file it all under 'H' for "Toy".
I've battled clutter for years.
Often, I leave books and papers open on my desk, multiple applications and tabs going to different URL's, etc.
My excuse has always been that when I return to my work, everything is there to remind me of exactly where I was and minimizes the time it will take for me to "swap in".
Stale stuff needs to be pushed out of perception to keep you sane, though.
Periodically go through stuff and assign it value based on a real assessment of how often you have accessed it in the past and will access it in the future. Be ruthless about it, don't be sentimental. I mean, really, I won't ever get around to reading all the RFC's pertaining to secure shell, no matter how much I think it would be really great to do that and no matter if I keep a paper copy in my backpack 24/7. It's not gonna happen.
Push out the infrequently accessed stuff as far away as you can.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
clean up mess
bash: clean: command not found
clean up mess
tcsh: Modifier failed.
Subduction leads to orogeny
Because I'm mostly blind, I'm very picky about clutter in my space. So my bedroom and computer room conventionally have lots of free space and beautiful empty surfaces.
This is achieved by the procurement of multiple drawer wooden Lingerie Cabinets. These are tall stately looking affairs with lots of medium sized wooden drawers (to avoid unwanted extra magnetism) stacked up as tall as me.
I assign each drawer to a particular variety of item and all of its associated cables, adapters and gizmos. For me, that means these are the drawers:
On the top of each cabinet are a bunch of battery chargers with batteries always trickle-charging or being swapped around regularly. Yea, I know they'll last longer if I keep'em empty, but I want to be able to use the stuff, eh?
Lego?
how old are you loser?
Lego?
Get a grip and throw it out or give it to the poor kids.
sad
I just keep all the boxes for every piece of hardware I buy, and when it comes not in use, it just goes back in the original box....yes...it takes quite a bit of space, but if you ever want to sell the item or just give it to someone, having the original box is always nice...plus it stacks well.
You might even consider buying it by the roll, I am sure its inexpensive, although I have never seem it sold, so I am guessing.
Also one problem with Zip ties, they are a pain to remove without a tool of some sort(knife, etc...). Then you need to be sure that you don't cut (or poke) the wrong thing! You could easily destroy what you are tying to save.
A nightmare of any new server room admin is to find all the wires in zip ties. Not only does it mean they need to keep a pocket knife handy, but it is common for zip-ties to "cut into" the wire casing, if you pull it closed to hard. Velco is better, but unless you want to look good (exposed wires maybe), why buy what you get free all of the time (or maybe by the roll cheap).
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
and don't forget that after you've donated that stuff, get a receipt saying you donated "printer, monitor, etc.". I used to think it was a waste of time, but at the end of the year you can claim that you donated $500 in computer hardware, and that can be a tax deduction. You'll still donate the same stuff, but at the end of the year you'll give less money to the government (whether that's good or bad is debatable... I happen to enjoy not giving away so much of money to the IRS, ymmv).
If you run out of closet space, they have these pieces of furniture called "cabinets" which are just like closets, but not built into the walls, so you can put them wherever you like. Look into it. Good luck!
What about using winrar or other compression utilities to make everything smaller ... like in TRON ... but you need a compactor for the real world :-\
just my 2 bytes
Legos: Get a 4ft dia circle of nice cloth and sew a loop of soft rope into the edge that can act like a draw-string bag. After you're done playing with the Legos, pull on the rope and toss the bag into the closet.
Another neat idea I saw was someone who had built a fake wall about 2ft infront of the real wall. The fake wall had nice woden moldings that hid various doors that could pop open to get access to tons of storage. With all of the junk hidden the room actually felt bigger even though it was 2ft shorter.
Woodworking: Although woodworking is another way to accumulate more stuff, I've found that custom built shelving and cabinets can hold things more efficiently than any store bought storage solutions. It also gets you away from the computer for a while.
The guy down at pawnbrokers keeps my gear organized.
You know, if you're going to post an Ask Slashdot, you could at least stop making words up.
--Stephen
I don't speak your crazy moon language.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
You should copyright this thought or it will end up being a show on Bravo. You know 5 gay geeks (programmer, web designer, Jean Luc-Picard lover, hand held device guy and case modder) will help a hapless nerd to get the female geek his heart desires.
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
That my office space at work does not fit the stereotype of geeky clutter. I generally don't generate much paper, prefering to actually try to live up to the 'paperless office' paradigm.
At home, on the other hand, I have several disorganized piles of junk in transition (stuff I am getting rid of after doing some 'Fall cleaning') - but for the most part the vast bulk of it is semi-neatly organized and stored in my work station composed of several hutches with file cabinets and other types of storage compartments.
All of my portable stuff is stored in my backpack, of course.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I've been on a push lately to get the junk out of my house and out of my life. If it wasn't for eBay I'd never get rid of anything, but I just put the stuff I don't need up for auction, and when I do need something, inevitabley it's on eBay...
So just auction (or throw away, if it's really useless) all your junk, unless you 1) use it or 2) have some sentimental value attached to it [yes, I need my Apple IIc, no further discussion].
Organization is only a small part of the show. The biggest part is that everything in the affected rooms gets taken out and stacked in the driveway. That's furniture, papers, everything.
The homeowners go through the pile with an unbiased third party and sort their stuff into a "Keep" pile, a "Toss" pile and a "Sell" pile. By talking packrats out of stuff they really don't need, they usually end up putting less than 10% of the stuff back in the house. That's the big secret: get rid of crap.
Aside: While we were evacuated during the SoCal fires, my wife and I sat in a motel room, with our photo albums, laptops, hard drives from our desktop and important papers in the car, and realized that we weren't really 'out' anything if the house burned down. The insurance company would buy us new TV's, DVD players, furniture, dishes, etc., but all that stuff in the basement that took a 26' U-Haul and four trips with a longbed pickup to get there didn't mean a thing.
So Thanksgiving is Clean Sweep day. Everything goes onto the patio, and 90% of it goes to the dump or to Salvation Army. We have our Home Depot card ready to get some shelving and clear bins, and we will pare the pile down to what we actually need. Looking forward to it.
"Boxes"? "Sorted"?
This is way more than I organize things. Why's he complaining?
It gets to the point it's impossible to walk across the floor without hearing something plastic cracking under your feet sometimes.
Don't forget you can use barcodes to label some of your parts. My book collection is barcoded.
topic: "gear"
audience: "geeks"
discussion: "girlfriends"!?!
am I missing something?
no
I wonder if any messy women ever get their lives cleaned up by marrying a man.
...or at least pretend to. When I was growing up as an Air Force brat, we were allowed to take ONE BOX of stuff when my Dad got transferred. Cut way down on the clutter.
No. Just get your girl to organise your gear. Of course you won't be able to find anything, but it will at least look neat.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
No.
I too am afraid of putting my electronics into plastic containers. Besides, I don't have extra tupperwares around.
What I do have are lots of extra boxes of all sizes that I bought various equipment from. I toss most of the large, odd shaped boxes, and use the rest to consolidate all of my hardware in. I have a small box for mice and a wide, shallow box for coiled cable. As for the screws and such, I keep them in tiny, zip-loc bags.
Briefs...but sometimes I use boxer-briefs which are really comfortable and make me look....bigger.... ;)
I forgot what I needed said item for in the first place
So thats what old age is like :-P
This is really no solution but I will share it anyway. I am blessed with a large shed. In it there are various parts of a wide range of projects from farm machinery to computers, etc. Most of my computer/electronic stuff currently resides in the shed in the rear of a dead pickup. Keeps it out of the mud at least. I plan to start using an old chest deep freeze for some stuff. That even will keep out the vermin and most of the dust. Don't you just hate it when the mud daubers fill up your cooling fan?
Actually there's ONE thing that's hard to deal with in an organizational scheme. The boxes and packaging material you need to keep in order to send a warrenty item back. I remember when my monitor needed service. The box was gone, and I had to have them ship[1] me a box with appropriate packaging. It protects you from any "unapproved packaging, no warrenty" issues. Of course once the warrenty expires...
[1] You don't want to know what they was going to charge me for a cardboard box, and packaging foam.
*snicker*
dump the shit, dude.
One key thing that helps me with the cable tangle is using plastic twist ties after looping the cable. That way I can do and undo them without the tie breaking (as would happen with metal twist ties), or wasting a bunch of zip ties. Then, as other's have suggested, I have various rubbermaid bins ($3-5 at Wal-Mart) that I sort them... one for ethernet and phone, one for audio/video, etc.
Obviously ripping apart atomic bonds takes a little time and (free solar) energy, so as rule I only backup stuff that I haven't touched in over a month, and if I haven't need to reassemble it in over a year I'll usually delete it to free up a few Terabytes for some more VRPr0n and celeb bodyscans.
--
Power to the Peaceful
I use these high-quality carriers for all my computer gear. GearGrip.com
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
Infrequently-used stuff naturally percolates to the bottom of any well-mannered pile.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
I suspect most men who would fit into that category end up marrying other men !!
PLASTIC = BAD Seriously, rubermaid and tuperware are the worst things you could possibly store electronic devices such as computer hardware. But a Simple shelf at home depot ($20.00 USD), and just put everything in static bags. This way your stuff is safe, and everyone who visits is awed by your collection of stuff in "those silver bags".
I keep a lot of my smaller stuff (cables, hard drives, DIMMs, electrical components, etc.) in a big filing cabinate.
:). The cabinate is however very space-effiecient and I can get a lot of stuff in there.
Of course, the trouble with that is it's all so neatly packed in that I daren't (or can't!) get it out. If I want something from the back/bottom, I have to pull out 95% of the rest of the equipment from that drawer..and then spend ages re-packing it.
So, a lot of it sits there unused, and quickly becomes obsolete
- Power: cables, wall warts, adapters etc.; big clothing store shopping paper bags with handles (easy to write on!) /video signal cabling: incl. headsets, mikes etc.; as above, smaller bags.
- digital signal cabling: as above, with separate bags for ethernet and PC peripherals + mice; ethernet bag also contains cable tester, crimping tool, a tiny see thru bag full of spare plugs, extra cable
- RF signal cabling: as above
- spare wire (hookup, ac, dc, antenna, coax): as above
- audio
All these bags lead to efficient use of shelf space, on shelves 1 and 1/2 feet apart.
- PC guts: wrapped in alufoil, marked with labels made with 1-inch Post-It stripe, lined up by function, i.e. ram, CPUs, HDs, power, audio, video, etc on a few dedicated shelves in cupboard
- larger items (VDUs, cases etc.) in basement, either in large boxes or in polypropylene "foil-pipe", the same used for protecting apparel or furniture
- screws etc. in a few flat handy boxes (shipping boxes for RAM) where all are visible; identical mix
- software & data CDs: in shoeboxes (just perfect!), segregated by OS and into free / pay apps by means of cardboard separators; substituting most original cases with slim ones
- a neat stack of CD jewel cases: as media on spindles is now cheaper than cases, I recycle cases religiously
- manuals: if original, _striclty_ lined up by size/color (I use visual memory), if self printed, segregated by OS, with label handwritten on plastic binding
- for smaller RF electronics parts, I mostly use sets of sturdy, sealable, transparent, plastic food bags, segregated by broad categories, in turn contained in shipping boxes; being transparent (and not too full) the process of turning them upside down, around etc rummaging for parts is surprisingly fast and not messy at all; this too is mostly an aid to visual memory; some component leads stick out, but who cares
- only static sensitive devices are stored separately, in antistatic bags in a smaller box
I create virtual storage areas in my house. Physically, they aren't really there, but in a house of geeks, virtual storage devices come in pretty handy.
I bought an old style metallic trashcan from ikea, about 50cm high and a radius of 20cm, where I store all my computer related hardware. Looks really cool, only problem is that some *#%$_)* friends of my girlfriend think it's a trashcan!I have developed this really fast method of searching the trashcan. I pour the content of the trashcan on the floor, pick up what ever it was I was searching for, and throw the rest of the stuff right back in. The time not spent on organizing probably out weights the time actually spent on searching, as I don't regularly dive for the stuff in the trashcan.
Oh, I don't know... I'm pretty messy.
And besides, that's not legal yet in the USA.
To me, the box type is important. They should be somewhat shallow so you can find stuff without having to dig too deep. Since I moved recently, I had dozens of those standard 1.5 cubic foot book boxes. I cut a bunch of them down from 12 inches to about 7 inches in height (cut the flaps off and turn the extra height into new flaps).
Now, organize all of your stuff into categories. If you're a real packrat, you'll have categories like 9-pin serial cables, LP record cleaning accessories, channel 3/4 video modulators, wall-warts, etc. (You might even have some actually useful categories, too.) Each category should be small enough to comfortably fit in a 1-gallon food storage bag. Fill each bag, tie it up, and put a label on it. Dutifully write down the bag's contents in your notebook.
If you have lots of circuit boards, you probably already have anti-static bags for them. Be sure to keep each circuit board in an antistatic bag, especially if putting them in any kind of normal plastic bag or container.
Organize the bags into larger categories and fill the boxes with bags. Label the boxes and update the notebook with the box contents.
Now you can stack the boxes on the floor or on shelves. I managed to cram an unbelievable amount of junk into about 20 boxes, which all fit neatly in the corner of the basement. And the best part is the whole system only cost me about $20 (mostly food bags and pricey label tape). Fancy bins from a container store have taken up more space and would have cost well over $100.
Life is so much better now that I've invested the time to organize all my stuff. In the past I'd waste countless hours trying to find some adapter or cable in random piles of semi-organized junk. Now I just reference my notebook and grab it in a few seconds.
I use those clear (milky clear) storage boxes and crates you can get at department & office supply stores. You can somewhat make out what is stored within. I also use self-adhesive mailing labels on the top and sides to list contents.
Buy 'em, pack 'em, and stack 'em in a closet. Just remember to go through and clean them out every decade or so...
I use the Big Shelf method, as in 'Don't think of it as the floor, think of it as the Big Shelf'.
I am an intern with a university networking department so I see a wide variety of storage methods some neat some not so sightly. Just today I saw an interesting thing the head networking administrator did to "organize" some of his smaller booklets. He had popped off the plastic cover on unused 5.25" drive bays on an old computer and used these to place the bookets on like a shelf. Probably not the best use of the space, but interesting non the less.
those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. -isaac asimov
Bag Of Holding
Why let those extra 7 spatial dimensions go to waste?
Snag some milk crates from uhhh...
Anyway, after you have aquired the requisite crates, fill them with junk and stack.
Neat and free. Also great for moving. Stack and roll.
Comes in designer colours as well.
There are 6 main bins:
Audio/Video - all cables for stereo, TV, recording
Computer - Harddrives, memory, cables. Every year I try to sell off the excess at the Tacoma Linux Users Group yard sale.
Network - Spare network cables, old hubs
Office Supplies - Toner, printer paper, labels.
Cassettes - A bunch of old tapes that I should convert to mp3 or some other digital format.
Magazines - Magazines that I cant seem to throw away.
It works for me and makes cleaning up go pretty smoothly.
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
I've got robotics stuff, wall warts, video gear, and electronics, computer stuff, and cables up the ying yang. The newest and best way (IMHO) to keep it all girlfriend friendly is in the Kids section of IKEA. It's like a pinewood bookshelf (4 or six feet high), but it stores plastic tubs with tupperware-like tops of varying sizes that slide in on rails (Like oven racks, sorta) It looks good. Can be resorted by just moving the tubs from rack to rack. Cheap, too. shelf is $39 to 59. Tubs are $2. Also a good way to get Kid's toys sorted (Obviously) Don't expect them to get the tubs at the top of the six-footers, of course!
"Knowing everything doesn't help..."
In boxers, but it still hangs a little to the left.
Old SCSI, audio, serial, power, network and whatever cables can be hung on a towel rail on the back of the bedroom door. The downside is you get a few odd looks from people - particularly if all the computer gear is now in another room at the other end of the house.
BE very careful of static with plastic tupperware. YOu could very easily fry your gear.
For sure!
I use a similar no-no for non-CMOS electronic components. I have a huge stockpile of passive components - resistors, capacitors, etc - and things like tubes, bipolar transistors, etc. Over 20,000 vacuum tubes alone, according to my last inventory.
What I use is 4x8" generic ZipLock-ish baggies which I buy at the local head shop. The guy must think I'm a mega-dealer, because every few weeks I go in wearing a shirt and tie and buy 100 (or more) 4x8" baggies for $6.
I drop a piece of cardboard with a label into each baggie, then I stuff it with components. Then I put the baggie into a 4" wide cardboard parts tray (Bankers Box # 7353). The trays are then stored in cheap metal shelving units with 9" space between shelves. I have 6 shelves for vacuum tubes alone.
Unlike doing this with other methods (small drawers), I can simply insert a weird resistor value between standard values. I can drop a bag of #6-32x0.75" screws between the #6-32x0.5" and #6-32x1" screws. If I fill a baggie with 1k 1/4W resistors, I just add another baggie. Suddenly find a 12AX7A? Stick it in a new bag behind the 10 or so full of 12AX7s. I can take a group out, throw them into my toolbox and take them with me, not worrying that I'm going to spill them. It's very handy.
For static sensitive stuff, I use 4x8" antistat baggies which I purchase from Newark or DigiKey.
I can't claim that I invented or discovered this method - I first saw it while I was working for Litton, and I loved it.
Doesn't work for big stuff like transformers, stepper motors, complete assemblies. For that, I still have to use TupperWare (or the disposable resealable containers.)
Having an inventory of parts is useless if you can't find what you need when you need it. But it's even worse if you *can* find it but it doesn't work. Remember to think about static.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Totally off-topic, but your livejournal has been deleted.
Just FYI.
You my friend are a couple of MILLION years behind the times.
Before I had to start moving every three months and gave my legos to the siblings, I had all of them (quite a lot, too) stored in these nail organizer things. I can't remember what the correct name for them is, but I found them to work nicely. I had boughten about $50 worth (or three things) and sorted my Legos into the small drawers. A good one costs about $10-$20 a piece in your local Wal-mart hardware isle, or at a hardware store.
A drawer for flat unos and 2x1s, another for flat 3x1s and 4x1s, one for lego men heads, one for their bodies, one for helmets/hats, etc. It takes some time to organize them all, but the result is very nice, especially if you build with them often (I wish I could). And if/when you move, just put cardboard along the front so the drawers don't slide out.
As for everything else, get small plastic bins. Books should go on a book shelf, but depending on the size of your gear, buying lots of small platic bins that are stackable can help out a lot. Or just go to Wal-Mart and see what they have in the household section. There's usually a lot of organizing stuff including drawers.
Details here.
"Have I used this in the last six months? No? Out it goes."
It sounds good now, but you'll wake up in the first week of December, when the temperature outside is somewhere around 0 F, owning six pairs of Bermuda shorts, a dresser full of T-shirts, and a pair of birkenstocks!
When it comes to being tidy I like to stick to a few simple rules :
/old useless warez (You are NOT gonna install windows 95 my friend) / old books (No, a reference to borland C++ 4 is NOT handy in this day and age).
:>
1) If it's broke don't fix it. Throw the bugger away. If you haven't found time until to to fix that broken xt you never will. It's just there collecting dust.
2) If you have ten of em, throw nine away. I myself had loads of cool (working) xts but let's fact it people : those are TOTALLY useless. You are NEVER going to use them, even if you could find old arcane network card's to hook em up to your network.
3) If it's not new in box and you have at least 2 other computers that supply the same function THROW THEM AWAY. It's not like you're gonna sit there with 4 386's alle used at the same time as serial terminals. 1 is more than enough.
4) Throw away all those crappy cover cds (winzip 5.x anyone ?)
5) Throw away your old print outs. I used to have literally HUNDREDS of these. I used to print everything I came across over the internet for further reading. After a while you know at least 75% of those papers by heart, at least 80% of them are outdated by six months & at least 20% of them are totally useless to you. Dump em. They're history. If you have to keep them store the originals on your server. It shouldn't be more than a couple of 100 MBs.
Do the above and you'll find you have a lot more closet space that can be nicely filled with your current (useful) hardware/books. I know throwing away things is HARD, especially when they're really cool (my wonderful XTs) or have a special personal relevance to you (O that first motherboard I fried) but you HAVE to. These things only hold you back. You'll feel better when you do, TRUST me.
BTW If you have something really cool in prestine condition then (especially if you have the original box/diskettes/manuals) for the love of god DON'T THROW IT AWAY. Give it away to a computer museum or at least sell it to a retro computing store or over ebay. Then at least someone else can enjoy it as much as you did and you'll have a bit of mullah left over so you can soften your sadness by getting that spanking new laptop you've always wanten
...somebody's got a case of the Mondays
:(
My favorite reference to junk has to be from PK Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", The simpleton living the vast empty apartment complex constantly had to fight the "kipple", or junk, as it has (Ive found this to be true) the tendancy to flow into his apartment.
have you tried inverting the middle tub?
seriously, with correct middle tub contents, it works.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
A few options for receipts...
1) Pocket-style manilla folders which expand accordian style. They come in various widths with the 3/4" depth being common. Since they have sides (unlike regular folders), small receipts don't tend to fall out of the sides.
2) 6x9 envelopes. Advantage is that you can seal them up once you've finished out a month, scribble the month/year on them and toss them in a drawer or storage bin. You'll have to fold letter sized paper in half. Still makes a decent way to keep your monthly expense account receipts organized.
3) 9x11.5" envelopes. Same ease of use as the 6x9s, except you don't have to fold letter sized paper in half. You can probably get 6 months to a year into a single envelope. Although I have 3 envelopes per year (expense account receipts, tax-related receipts and then one for general receipts). Again, you can seal the envelope and just toss it in a drawer / file / storage bin / safe deposit box.
Monthly statements get scanned at 300dpi B&W, stored on a PGP disk and the originals get shredded.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
An old 13" TV set cost me $12.00 to dispose of last month.)
Meanwhile the rest of us would put the TV set out on the sidewalk with a sign on it, "for sale -- enquire within", and let the neighbourhood thieves do the rest.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Personally, I just toss it in the corner and let it build up until either I move or someone forces me to clean it up. Either that or until it grows into a massive enough pile that it becomes subject to landslides(equipmentslides?) and finally has a massive enough slide that I am unable to escape and am crushed under a wall of thrown off geekdom.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
you pack rat.
You should tape the reciepts to another piece of (acid free) paper and then scan them. Keep the real copy too, but I've found my scans work just as well for most anything I've ever needed. I've been into "the drawer" once in 3 years.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
I have a drawer in my computer desk. Then I have a cabinet in another area in my house which is supposed to be used for organizing stuff. Then, in true geek fashion, anything I'm too lazy to move their get's shoved in my drawer. Which means I have an extra surge protector, old speakers, keyboards, mouses, old inkjet cartridges, etc...
They certainly do! Have you never stripped the head of a screw while tightening it? Static electricity causes that.
eBay, duh! I'm serious. Those non-/. readers (aka "cow-orkers", or "in-duh-viduals") will buy ANYTHING on ebay. During my own clean up project, I came up with at least 5 or 10 lbs of old cables. Sold the mess on eBay for $25.
No clue what the buyer did with things I formally considered handy to have around, like that 20-ft 9-pin null modem cable...
Semi-seriously, I find that Goodwill, Salvation Army, or whoever else hangs a bag on my door this week, gets a lot more donations now that I am older and making more money. Lots of folks have suggested tossing stuff because it is only $XX if you need it. Well that only works, if you think $XX is "not much".
I like to keep my clutter down by "storing" everything I need at Costco, Home Depot, and (if I can wait) various Internet sites like Amazon and NewEgg.
God help me if civilization collapses and I really need those parallel printer cables I just gave away!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Im a 14 year old geek (and a very hard-core one at that), I just leave it on the floor until my mom yells at me, she doesnt realize, I dont know where to look for it if its not on the floor ;-)
A few weeks ago the NY Times had a article about storage systems with links to diff. sites. Sorry I nuked those bookmarks but several online sources exist for great and/or amazing storage systems.
As a photographer I like Light Impressions for archival boxes and other museum quality goods.
I deleted it back in June or July I think... though it still says I have "30 days" to undelete it for some reason.
Had enough of it. It's not coming back.
I had a friend at Apple who did the same thing using HyperCard. He indexed his whole house when he moved. The great thing about HyperCard (or any other DB-like system) as opposed to a text file is that you can have a record/card for each item, and one for each storage location. Moving an item to a new location is fast. Plus you can put keywords and stuff on an item to help you do searching for it.
Now THAT is anal!
... You are a dealer!! How many audiophiles have you got hooked? How many tube amp junkies crawl to you begging for a hit? ... Where do I sign up?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
The clear plastic storage drawer sets you get from the Container Store hold up better and make more efficient use of space (less "rounded" corners and sides) than the Rubbermaid ones from Wal-Mart. They're stackable and come with wheels too.
For extra extra organization, I have mine categorized and labeled just in case I can't immediately identify the types of cables/connectors/weird stuff from the outside. It's also worth the time to untangle, roll up, and secure the cables with twist ties . That way not only are your cables organized and *useful*, but you also get rid of most of the twist ties that have been collecting in your kitchen drawer for years (the ones that come with garbage bags).
Of course, it helps to get rid of all the completely obsolete stuff you *know* you will never use again too. Here's a good rule: find everything you don't need now, haven't used for three or more years, and don't actually plan to use in the forseeable future, and list it on eBay in lots (SCSI cables, 500MB hard drives, 150W AT power supplies, 286 boards, giant ISA video cards with 2MB ram or less, dot matrix printers, those cables you acquired some years ago and never figured out what they were for, etc). Whatever meets those criteria and doesn't sell on eBay, throw away; it's junk. Trust me, you will not miss it.
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
I've got three meters: they plastic yellow student one, runs off a 9 volt. This seems to be the meter I always reach for. The radio shack pocket meter that runs off button batteries. Best use for it is continuity. But its small so who cares.
But the third is a big ass honkin' meter from non-linear systems. Very nice, also tells temperature with a transistor plug in, but, I never use it.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Hire looters or arsonists
My grandfather bought a number of punch card cabinets at garage sales a number of years ago. They are long wide drawers, two to a row. Great for throwing cards, hard drives, heatsinks, tubes full of old chips (I'm showing my age now). :-).
They were desinged for offices and look rather nice. The newer ones (70's) have a funky handle. The older ones (30's and 40's) have an elegant antique look to them. The fact that they were used for Holorith cards is an added plus
I saw a lot about actual storage, and little about actually knowing what you're storing. Though it may seem impossible, it's a good idea to inventory the stuff before you file it away. That way you *know* you have that extra USB 2.0 cable filed, rather than just guessing it's in a bag buried in your closet where you keep all your computer cables.
/him ideas of junk (like food, clothing, jewelry, a house) you could buy instead.
I've undertaken a similar project, and have been playing around with organizing all this on my recently purchased iBook. (Well, at least that's how I justified it to my wife. I need this G4 iBook to get organized!) I'd been trying, rather painfully, to catalogue stuff in AppleWorks. You read that right, AppleWorks. I heard your gasp from over here. It's actually aggravating me enough that I might write a custom MySQL database to store all the data. I hate wondering, do I really have a parallel port gender changer? How long does the warranty on that Palm Pilot last? I just want quick answers. Plus, I'm looking to scan in all the assorted manuals and what not, so I can kiss all that paper goodbye. (Tip: check out the product web site -- you can often download a PDF of the manual right from there.) My struggling filing cabinet will thank me in its own way, by not threatening to fall on me every time I open the drawer. Yay, my cats' lives are spared once again!
Bonus: do your documentation well enough, and you can get a personal net worth of your assets! Somewhat. If you depreciate the values. Or something.
Detraction: you realize how much money you've wasted on various things you rarely use. It will really, really add up and make you sad. Don't let your wife / husband / significant other see it or you'll give her
For best results, organize your stuff into loose categories before putting them into containers.
At one point I had a big plastic bin of just old cables (scsi, 13w3, serial, thinnet, old power adapters), one for components (drives, memory, PCI cards, etc), one for newer cables (usb, fw, enet), and one for power cords.
After a few years of non-use, I was able to donate the "old cable" collection without fear - I figured if none of my systems needed anything from that bin, then that bin was safe to throw away.
Get clear containers if you can, because you can spend a lot of time trying to find stuff, and it's always better to find the right box the first time.
And if you have time, be sure to tie up the cables. There's nothing more annoying than having to spend 20 minutes untangling the 40 cables that have managed to twist themselves around the cable you want!
Parts are so cheap and grow obsolete so fast that I just leave mine out by the local college at lunchtime- alms for the poor..baksheesh..
* You have regular sex
I HAVE MORE & BETTER SEX SINGLE
* your wife will make sure...
I WAS THE ONE WHO PICKED UP AFTER HER
* You get kids
NO KIDS
* You get a housekeeper
I DID HALF THE HOUSEWORK
* You get a friend for life
SHE WANTED TO BE FRIENDS FOR LIFE AFTER SHE DIVORCED ME IN ORDER TO PLAY THE FIELD, BUT IT HURT TOO MUCH SO I HAD TO TELL HER NOT TO CALL ANYMORE
-MARRIED AT 18..DIVORCED AT 28
I looked at the title quickly and I thought it was all about making your car storage look good.
I do a 45 minute drive to work here in Sunnyvale from Santa Cruz every day, so some tips on organizing
the stuff in the back and passenger seats of my car would be really helpful. I can never find anything
and it looks like a small computer store exploded back there.
Maybe someday I'll get the PC properly mounted in the trunk and a nice LCD display on the console, but for now, it's 802.11 and a laptop for remote.
I have ADD and am somewhat OCD, so I have a few systems worked out. A big part of each system is to just throw away anything I don't need on a regular basis, unless it is very important to keep it around for reference.
1- Paperwork/Manuals/Warranties: Paperwork all gets filed alphabetically in hanging files in those white cardboard boxes. Rotate old stuff into closets. The best part about filing manuals and warranties is that it means I can throw a box away as soon as I know that the media is not defective.
2- Books: Shelve them or sell them. Be careful with this one, as it is cheaper to buy *nice* bookshelves than it is to replace old books that one sold or trashed. If you have the money, barrister bookshelves (The ones with lift-up glass doors on each shelf.) mitigate the need for frequent dusting.
3- Movies/DVDs: I don't even have a VCR, so all of my videocassettes got trashed. My DVDs are neatly organized in my entertainment center. I only buy a DVD if it is a must-have, otherwise I just use NetFlix so that *they* can store it for me.
4- Old computers: I just give them away now. This gives me more time with the new ones.
5- Cables: Everything is carefully organized and I never leave unused cables laying around. If I have a lot in one place, they are all tied back with velcro, twist-ties, or cable cuffs. I keep a few extras in a box, all of the rest go in the trash. Seriously, how many USB/USB 2.0 cables does one really need to keep now that many devices come with them?
6- CD-ROMs: Software all gets stripped of its box and case and is filed in a CD holder of some sort (Target sells CD pages that go in 3-ring binders!), or on a spindle if I won't need it often. Old video games that aren't "classics" are either traded-in or given away to the children of co-workers. Music CDs are kept on CD storage racks in cast I transport them somewhere, but for the most part I only play my music from the Nomad Zen so that I don't need to use the CDs very often.
If you have more than a few hundred CDs of any one type, just toss the cases, and alphabetize them using zip-loc bags in plastic boxes with cardboard dividers.
Another important thing to remember is to label *every* box. This way you can tell what is in them at a glance once you have fifty of them stuffed into a closet.
I keep everything in an unfished basement, so it doesn't matter so much.
I use those office-boxes that you get at office depot in six packs for four dollars. They are cheap uniform, and I can write on the white surface of the box.
I use smaller boxes for the smaller stuff and put them all on a shelf.
I keep my bow on my left shoulder, my +3 sword on my right hip, my +2dragon slayer accross my back...
oh wait, I thought this was Adventuredot:Action for adventurers. Stuff from monsters.
My bad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Must put disclaimer - does not hurt after about 3 days."
Mine hurt less than stubing a toe, less than a cut finger, less than biting my tounge while eating.
I asked for lots of painkiller and got it (local of course).
I keep all of my stuff in arbitrarily large bins which mold to the shape of the object I put in them. I keep them at random around the house, but each one has an index card in it which contains the location of the next one, and I keep an index card containing the location of the first. I find this to be, by far, the most logical and simple system to use.
You're not a geek. wait, thats good news!
huzah!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If I only gave my wife a quarter she would be mad as hell!
You must be hung like a horse!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Large size heavy weight zip-loc bags !!!
A bookshelf in the coffee room at work has been designated for a "free book exchange". Leave one / take one. Works great.
Get married. Your spouse will "organize" your stuff into the large bin outside the garage at frequent intervals until your former storage space contains all of her stuff.
That's what I use for my mass of oddball cables. Works good enough for my needs.
My room at home is very organised into many piles.
:)
Each pile is self sorting so that the stuff that I use most is on the top, and the stuff I use the least is on the bottom.
I have a shitload of antistats that i've collected over the years, most of the stuff is then put in rubbermaid containers which all have a grounding wire attached to them (the static that builds up is disappaited through you (thats why you get zapped), having a grounding wire (rigged to a suitable metal casing, considering it's a 2nd line of static defense, it works :)
cable ties keep unused cables piled into boxes
I have a 2 foot high 4 post rack that keeps 2 boxes plus stereo amp and VCR organized (just don't get behind the sucker).
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
I use some sterilite (cheap rubbermaid knockoff) drawers and modular drawers in my room, and they work great. The modular drawers are huge, and 4 of them can easily hold 20-odd laptops with power bricks and extrenal drives, etc etc. Cheap too, About $15-20 each.
:)
For smaller objects I just get small storage boxes, kinda like a tackle box without the giant open space at the bottom. A few of those can hold insane amounts of stuff. I even have a very flat one I use for holding my watches and jewelery.
Just look for places to tuck drawer units under, like that section of an "L" shaped desk nobody really uses. Or that small space in the bookshelf that sits open, unless you're like me, then your bookshelf is stacked double-row
Under-bed rolling bins are great for putting your out-of season clothes in, giving you a bit more usuable closet and dresser space, and maybe even hiding some of those keyboards all of use seem to accumulate.
> Is it possible to have a clean organized grown-up home, without throwing
> everything away?"
Yes, mostly. Designate one area of your home as the "work area" or "mess
zone". A basement room is a good choice. Outfit it with shelves on every
wall and a table, some benches, a desk, that sort of thing (i.e., lots of
horizontal surface area). Here you can have computer components sitting
around, boxes and bins of different kinds of cables, stacks of manuals and
papers and books, and so forth. A three-drawer cabinet or two (like a filing
cabinet but with high-sided drawers made for holding things besides papers)
is a good kind of furniture for this room, too. Also, you want a couple of
easily-repositioned lamps, for shedding light in exactly the right part of
a computer case, or whatever.
Keep all your junky stuff in this room, and out of the rest of the house.
When (not if) the room starts to get awefully cluttered so that it becomes
difficult to navigate to the opposite side of the room, box up some of the
stuff you use least often. If there's no place to put the box, cart it to
the attic for longer-term storage. (Striking a balance between keeping
a high enough percentage of your stuff boxed up that you have room for
most of it in the room and yet keeping enough stuff layed out that you can
reach the things you need constantly does take some thought, but it's not
an impossible balance to strike, generally.)
Now, the rest of the house can have some computer equipment, but only in the
form of complete, working systems with covers on the cases that have some
hope of being used in any given 24-hour period. When you need to work on
a computer, or when you stop using it regularly, you bring it to the work
room. If you have family members who don't like mess, you make a bargain
with them: they leave your work room alone, and you do your part to keep
the rest of the house picked up. (Dirty clothes in the basket, and all
that sort of nonsense.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
to cover the boxes.
Put everything in a closet, attic or other storage space. (Boxing everything works too.) Record the date. Twelve months later, get rid of everthing still sitting in storage. If you have not used it for 12 months, you probably never will. Donate books/journals to the library (so you can still access them if you need to), and donate everything else to GoodWill or a domestic violence shelter or a school or something. Donate porn to Slashdot. For cables that you "must keep," buy a cable rack(s) and hang it in the walk-in closet behind the door. Get rid of that old incomplete 386/486/586. If it's not plugged in, you don't need it. Have a garage sale.
I don't have any extra hardware.. I have a very large hand me down plan.. each pc goes through at least 3 people before i finally take it apart for scrap parts.. and donate the motherboard/cpu/memory to friends in need -joe
I get rid of my old junk here and people actually buy it!
Plano's great for storing small stuff, but well, it's all about what you're storing.
I use an older model, similar to the 1234 for miniatures (Warhammer 40k). The trays are good for sorting arms and weapons and such, and you can drop the bits for a guy you're working on in one of the compartments, and the larger space in the top I use for paints, and the top bit for my pin vice, brushes, and other long items [had to make some modifications to the case for that]
For small computer parts that you have to be more mobile with (ie, drop it in a bag, and go), I prefer something that has a more durable lock. For that, I use the 'tough cases' from DeWalt -- you have to release two locks to get things out (one to split it in half, a second to open a side), and you can't close it without making sure the two sides are locked.
I keep compartments for PCI blanks, assorted Sun and rack keys, 10-32 rack screws, smaller screws, etc.
Plano tackle boxes are best if you have lots and lots of little bits, but only a small volume of each thing. I don't think I could keep my legos in Plano, as I have too many, and well, there are so many parts that wouldn't fit well into the sizes that I've seen available.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I use clear heavy-duty zip-loc bags for storing rolled up cables (one each for IDE, Power, Phone, etc.) and connectors. The bags are nice to stuff into a large bin because they pack well and are easy to look inside for that certain special part.
:-)
I use shoebox sized clear plastic bins so I can hold up the bin and look inside from the sides and bottom of the box, fast random access while searching for that certain connector.
I label my bins:
* RF (tv,vhf,wifi),
* Analog(audio,phone),
* Comm(rs232,ps/2)
* Power(dc adapters, converters, connectors)
I keep files (paper) for useful magazine articles (or scan to store images) and use 3-ring binders to store CDs that aren't ripped to my drive. My desk is often an archilogical site, which is when I know it's time to clean up. I try to have a place for everything and keep everything in it's place, but still believe a clean office is the sign of a sick mind.
However, my wife still isn't used to me refering to the linen closet as the "server room", But she's finally comfortable with the kitchen PC (laptop on swivle stand with WiFi) for reading morning news and looking up recipes.
Suncoast Linux - Sarasota, FL
I've noticed that the time/energy required to keep things well organized just ain't working. The more complex the organization, the more energy required until it becomes self-feeding. More important to actually use/play with the stuff. Won't even go into the "Brave Little Toaster" implications (why yes, it is a Marantz Quad connected to the video games. Why keep it? It still works.).
Most systems tend to self-organize. I figure you want to keep the organization just at the functional level; if I can find it and no one is tripping over it, good enough. I will not be a party to the tyranny of Martha Stewart.
And collapsible shelves. And free beer when you move $]
Fifty 11x16x6 stackable plastic tubs by Rubbermaid, with shelving in the closets to hold it all. Cheap, sturdy, waterproof, and they're all stamped with the semi-naughty sounding word "RubberMaid".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Assuming that I sit at zero degrees (looking from the top, "north" being straight ahead):
19 degrees to right is the first monitor, 30 degrees right is the second monitor. OK, skip over the empty wine bottles since this is a geek list...next is the DSL modam and a standby 28.8 modem. Further over ther is the phone and printer, and...
S'why I run the humidity at home around 87%. And mist everything with water, too.
Perhaps a bit industrial for the average apartment renter, but for those who've decided to buy a long-term dwelling modular storage systems such as those offered by Triton Products are a god-send.
Geek-caveat - their web site is horrid, terrible and nasty. But they do have a minor catalog here. I've been quite happy with the ultra-configurable system they've designed.
-shpoffo
What if when cleaning you realize you have all this old computer junk that you want to get rid of? If it's too old, charities won't even want it. Then where? Not to the landfill, i trust ...
While most of the articles on ./ have concentrated on how evil RF tags can be, I think there are obviously good uses for them as well.
I hope that in the future I'll be able to buy an inexpensive RF tag scanner that has an adjustable range from maybe two meters to tens of centimeters. Also, I'll be able to buy generic RF tags with unique IDs and tag and catalog any items that I may want to find some day.
A database on my computer would allow me to search for stuff that I don't even remember getting and once I had a list of items I want to look for, I could load it up into the scanner and start walking around the house to find the items.
The advantage of this system is that you can pack things very tight into boxes and you don't open those boxes until you know that what you want is in there.
One step further from that, you'll have "room tags" in various places, so that when you do your search, the scanner also notes those and can update the "last known location" for all the items close to the room tag. So, if you carry that box with all the SDRAM DIMMs into the basement and you have your scanner with you (or built into your cell phone), the next time you look for those on your computer, your computer will know that they are in the basement.
Meanwhile, my vast collection of CDs plus the data in my personal SAN are organized according to MIME types: text, message, audio, image, video, model, application, and subfolders thereunder. Also, I saw somewhere the suggestion that the only indexing scheme that endures is chronological, so everything is cross-linked into directories of the form YYYY/MM/DD going back to 1990.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Several local geeks swear by these things for storing their junk.
It's called piles of shit all over the floor.
And makes me take all "MY" stuff to my shop.
where its all stored in walmart 18 gallon tubs with the level method of organization, thats where if you remember when you seen it last you can kinda guess which level it is in the stack of tubs.
Get a laptop and throw it all away.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -Gandhi
Slightly to the left. (It goes there all by itself actually, not much organizing needed)
28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds... that is when the world will end.
I generally put stuff into whatever cardboard box fits best. Then I stack the boxes on the floor. A big reason for this approach is that, other than a desk and a chair, I have no furniture, whatsoever.
I've seen far-out houses on PBS where walls have drawers buit-in, floors have trap-doors, etc....where you can store everything out of the way as if it wasn't there at all. That's how I would like to store my stuff.
Mi klopodas varbi por Esperanto.
...take over the house.
First I made the Former Front Bedroom (TM) into my office. When that filled up I set up a PC in the Former Living Room and PC Anywhere'd to the original PC where all the email and files still are. The Former Living Room accumulation spread to the Former Dining Room. The kitchen counter is often the only clear space for working on the innards of computers and disk enclosures. The only places spared have been the master bedroom and the spare bedroom. The laundry area is full of boxes, too.
My Former Dining Room has made a terrific computer room, with two six-foot equipment and work tables, two 5-foot-tall 19" racks, 10KVA of 240V UPSs, a 21-inch Hitachi monitor and 8-port KVM, about a dozen computers of three different types, a parts bin arrangement, a cubbyhole arrangement that can hold many dozens of disk and tape drives, and three six-foot-tall shelf units.
Home Depot sells a storage unit billed as being a "shoe rack." It's made of chipboard, very sturdy (far too sturdy for shoes), is subdivided into 25 cubbyholes and is perfect for storing 5.25" devices when stood on a table or shelf.
The sturdy wire-frame shelf units someone mentioned earlier as being sold at Sam's Club in the wheeled version in chrome are also sold at Home Depot without wheels in chrome or black. The shelves can be substantially improved by cutting fiberboard to fit, either the thin stuff for just making the shelves solid for books and such, or the heavy fiberboard for holding massive items.
In my world, if it's out of sight, it may as well not exist, so I try to arrange things so that as much as possible is visible. Opaque boxes are bad, sometimes necessary, but always labelled. See-through bags and containers are good.
I would love to have affordable RFID tags and some form of designed or de facto homing on desired tag numbers. I use barcoding to tie items back to a 100% complete purchasing and receiving database but often the problem is that I can't find things I know I have.
Look at the bright side: there's always seppuku.
You cat get spools of this stuff (usually in green) from gardening stores - just cut it to the length you need.
Over the years I have found an effective means of controlling my squirrelling of old kit - my wife! She frequently "accidentally" bins items I leave cluttering up areas of the house she considers non-computer rooms. After the subsequent row, I usually end up realising I had not even looked at the piece of junk she had binned for years and admit she was right.
This has made me very careful in collecting the stuff I really want to keep into a single small cupboard, carefully static bagged etc, and ensuring she knows that cupboard is outside her juristiction. This process with the post-row climbdown also keeps the local florists and confectioneers happy too!
I find moving house is a good way to cut down on computer junk.
First me and my wife moved from a huge house to a tiny house... and had a computer giveaway party for all my nerd friends. It was painful, but fun to see everyones faces when they saw the more esoteric computers in my collection.
Then we emigrated to Amsterdam, and had to fit everything we owned into two cars to go on the boat. That didn't work out, so six months later we moved back to England, fitting everything into one small self-storage room for a month. Hard to deal with, but I own far less junk now.
Steve.
A latent existence
I personally dont organise, I get piles and piles of crap until my significant other has a rant, and then I sort into stuff i need, stuff i can use, stuff i can get away with keeping etc
Every year or so i throw a bunch of stuff on ebay, and every year i make a killing out of the real rubbish that people are willing to pay for- i even get emails from people asking about *other* stuff i might have hanging about, so i get rid of a vast quantity of the stiff i can get away with too....
Apart from that i have 3 wardrobes for stuff, and a bed in my computer rooms where i store cases and bulky stiff to keep
oh and a partner who tidies stuff up!!!!
Only Gay people (I don't mean this in a derogetory way) and women like the stuff.
I mean sure, everyone has some of their cheap furniture (because it's cheap) but do you really like it?
(My first theory was just towards women but several individuals who were gay were pointed out to me to dispute my point to I added them to the list
Q: How do you keep a mindless Slashdotter occupied for hours?
Click here for answer!
I store my computer equipment in tupperware and etc., but I always store bare electronics, such as PCI cards or chips, in anti-static bags within the tupperware, which should protect them sufficiently.
If you own a Commodore 64-powered particle accelerator, the odds are not too much in your favor to begin with.
Well, actually, toilet paper makes great gaskets for your homemade CPU coolant pump, if smeared liberally with lithium grease...
Ever wonder why you have all that crap? ...
WHY?! Because you're a geek?
You damned right I am!
Hell, get the Apple I schematic tattooed as a swingin' back-piece!
Hmm, am I the only one that thinks of that as being kinda cool?
I'm a pure geek and I love my museum of old and cutting edge tech. It's even better when you share an apartment with fellow geeks. Every evening is fun tech time. Every night is monster home theater movie night. It's also a lot cheaper to maintain and add to the collection when 3 - 5 guys are adding to it.
Who in their right mind would want to trade all of this in for a minivan, IKEA furniture, and various baby/child peripherals?? Not me. At least not in the near future.
I've seen a lot of good suggestions about types of boxes and shelving to use and the one year use rule, but I don't think anyone's brought this up. When you're thinking about where to put things, you need to think about how you're going to use your organization system and how you're going to access stuff later.
Point 1: Your use of the file system. My mother had file boxes that she stored her files in. After a while, however, she couldn't get into the boxes to file things because she had too much stuff stacked on top of them. We got her an attractove open file box that she can't stack things on as a working file. The idea is that now those things that went in stacks can go into folders in this box. The closed file boxes seem like a good idea, but they might not work for everybody. Any other seemingly good idea might work perfectly well for one person and be a disaster for someone else.
Point 2: Future access. Don't put the things you use most on the highest shelves (or the lowest if you have bad knees). Whatever organizing gear you choose to use, make sure that the things you use the most are most accessible. Things you don't use as much but that you're not ready to get rid of should be the least accessible.
The basic point here is that there is no one size fits all solution to any type of organization. It all depends on how you work.
One evening some time ago, a couple of friends of mine discovered this enormous pile of old retail candy bins sitting out on the curb. They were loading as many as would fit into their car when the homeowner came out and told them there was another big pile in the garage, from their candy store that they had recently closed. They called the friend whose house they had just left, who immediately dashed over there, pausing just long enough to take the seats out of his minivan.
I scored 4 of them; they're made of clear heavy plastic and each as 4 drawers approx. 4" wide by 8" high by 12" deep. They needed thorough cleaning (still had various bits of candy stuck to them), but they're incredibly useful for storing computer bits and all the other detritus of geekly existence.
I let go of my assorted stuff when you pry it from
my cold dead hands!
Yes, that might be pathological. But sometimes you
DO need that old stuff. I recently used a hand full
of my old 1MB-simms to fill up a used sparc-station
I got. So there, it runs much better, now that it
has 24MB of ram. What I need the SS itself for?
Well, uhm, I do need it, realy, or at least I might
use it someday, erh, stop insulting me with your
stupid questions, I just _need_ the stuff, ok?
As parts are upgraded, I try to combine them with other parts and create full machines- instead of spending 15 bucks on a rubbermaid box, I get cases off of ebay for 8! The result is that my apartment has a small array of pcs in various states of disrepair, lined up along the wall. Although not a single box is operational, it sure does make a nice shelf for all of the other shit that doesn't have a home!
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
My mom does all her bookcases alphabetically by country of author's origin, then alpha by author inside the country.
Share and Enjoy!
http://www.planomolding.com/ Simple, modular, and clear. Many models use real pivoting hinges rather than flexible plastic ones. They come in many sizes, the interior compartments are user-configureable, they are inexpensive, and carried by plenty of brick-and-mortar stores, so you can try before you buy.
to find
i like dick too
I, a geek, married another geek. I don't have a wife to organise my stuff, and my husband's just as bad as me. I wonder if I could hire a non-geek woman to do my housework and organisation?
Instead of less mess, marriage gave us more mess. How many sets of glasses do you need? We got 8 sets at our wedding. I'm guessing our family doesn't talk to each other. To tell the truth, I would rather our wedding guests had given us the 5 GBP they spent on glasses. Invite enough guests, get enough money to buy some more shelves for said glasses.
I am 17 and have added quite a few stuff to my gear collection. I have a recyclying center at my disposal. I could get vintage parts and such. Its really nice. I have organized it in a metal food rack in my closet along with the tower computers laying under the clothing neatly. I also have other components under my bed. I have operating systems and other cds added to my software library. I also organize my code and add notes to it like it should be.
Gaylord sells 45,000 items to libraries. If anyone knows how to organize, it's libraries. http://www.gaylord.com/
.
The best containers you can buy anywhere in the world are Lock & Lock made by Hana Cobi (Korea). See http://us.locknlock.com/main.asp for more info (great website with pictures of all sizes, dimensions, & text & videos showing why they are superior). http://www.containerstore.com, Rubbermaid, & Sterlite containers are a joke compared to Lock & Lock. One Lock & Lock container, the HPL827 is perfect for storing CDs in jewel cases. It holds 40 slim ones or 20 standard size, and is easily strong enough to toss it in a back pack and very rugged. All the Lock & Locks are totally air & liquid tight with a silicone gasket, with 70 sizes ranging from 0.1L to 12L.
I bought mine at Safeway (grocery store); they're also sold on the QVC shopping channel (cable TV), which mostly sells gimmicks. Why ask why?
Milk crates used by grocery stores (the ones with the steel band at the top) also kick ass. They are indestructable & you can see what's in them without "opening" them as with cardboard boxes. Lay them on their side & stack them to the ceiling. Plywood between each row lets you use 1/3 to 1/2 as many crates. They aren't sold to the public in reasonable quantities, but I've seen them on pallets behind grocery stores, even at night . .
For labelling (either things or the containers that contain them), the best pens are Staedtler Lumocolor permanent pens (Germany)--their ink is stronger (richer), and adheres better than any other permanent pen. They have about 10 colors and 5 different sizes. The bookstores of larger universities is the only place I see them in the US.
The silver and gold markers made in Japan by Pilot are the best for labelling black and other dark colored items or items exposed to the UV light outdoors which eventually destroys regular ink. They cost about $2.75 each and have a ball inside--you have to shake it up before you use it. They are widely available.
Pilot and Zebra brand ink pens are consistently the best. They cost a little more, but for something you use so often, that's irrelevant. Zebra's Zazzle flourescent highlighters are the bomb--elegant shape, slim, totally clear plastic barrell showing exactly how much ink is in it.
Scotch (3M) now markets clear duct tape (Finally!). It's very adhesive, available in small diameter rolls. It's 3.6 cm wide, 3.66 m long (1.42 inch x 4 yards for those still using the obscurantist English system, rather than the metric system). Deceive, inveigle & obfuscate; beware of republicans posing as humans.
I'm a tool junkie, and spray painting them is cool, helps me find them in dim light, helps identify them as mine, protects the ones that could rust, also cheap entertainment. Gold laquer is the most reliable (dries completely in just minutes); blue metal flake is beautiful. You can't polish a turd--try spray paint.
Dremel's patents expired, so you can now get knockoff versions (China) for 1/3 to 1/4 the price of Dremel (80 piece set for $20!). "Dremels" & spray paint at auto parts stores. BTW Gerber multi tools & knives are better steel than any Leatherman or Swiss Army knife.
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies."
"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged." --MIT Professor Noam Chomsky
"Judged in terms of the power, range, novelty and influence of his thought, Noam Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive today." -The New York Times
Each day 74 species go extinct, 32,000 people die of starvation/malnutrition, 60,000 die from bad water. Have a nice day.
Dare to Slash Military Spending. Party Naked in the church of your Choice.
Best CD of 2003: The Power to Believe by King Crimson. Buy it directly from King Crimson's record label at http://www.disciplineglobalmobile.com/order/
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -MIT Ling
*sigh*
And all have pencils, pens, and paper. Paper might be loose sheets on a clipboard, or a notebook.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I've got mounds of 'spare' computers and gear kicking around. The simple way I found to store all this stuff was to make my spare bedroom a make-shift workshop. Then, I took over the closet in said bedroom and used it for storage. Lots of plastic bags and anti-static bags for parts. Lots and lots of zip lock bags and wire ties / zip ties for the spare wiring. Then, just a permanent black marker to identify what each container has in it. Also a couple of massive rubber maid storage boxes to place it all in.
Oh, and if you have any spare book shelves around, they make a great display case for easy access to the tools and commonly used 'bench parts' (known working parts that I use for testing purposes).
Anyway that's my two cents.
-T