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 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.
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!
BE very careful of static with plastic tupperware. YOu could very easily fry your gear.
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.
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.
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!
Our recycling center charges for electronics by the pound.
Does anyone remember when recycling companies actually bought the fucking scrap?
As I recall, that sort of thing usually served as an incentive to recycle!
...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.