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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 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.
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).
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.
Zip-ties are great but I find that Rip-ties are much better. This cuts down on the cable-retrieval time when under pressure.
"Well, if you don't want your relatives and friends to die, help me spread the news." -Alex Chiu
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.
Me too, except I went with this stuff. It's a little more "office-like" than "bedroom-like", and it matches my Ikea desk, too. That is the setup I have, the bottom is a file hanging file drawer, middle is 3 5-6" deep drawers (perfect for hard drives, properly tied up cables, etc), and an addition to the top which is just a couple doors in which I can put random crap. I plan to get another one of those three-drawer units to have more drawer space.
Overall it works out well, it's neat, clean, and everything is organized. I do have some organizers in the drawers as well, plastic bait-type things, which I use for organizing screws, as well as tupperware containers for storing drive brackets, bay covers, and IDE cables.
Actually, the technical term is "Management by Piles", and it's a valid (if not widely accepted) way of organizing things. People with good visual-spatial memories usually do quite well with this technique (It's in this stack, about a third of the way down -- here you go!).
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I just got married, but I was living with my fiance for the past year. (Un)Fortunately, she's a geek and just as unorganized at times. Usually it's my anal-retentive personality that ends up cleaning for the both of us. I have come to love all Rubbermaid(TM) storage products because of this :)
Seriously though, for the little computer parts, go to an arts & crafts store (like JoAnn's), and get a small art box with multiple storage sections--I have 1 for screws, 4 for different adapters, 1 for cables, 1 for thermal compounds and tape, etc.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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 =-
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
Ikea is pretty decent for utility stuff. I had a couple of cheapass Ikea shelves - one eventually filled up with novels, but the other was devoted to hardware, CD cases, tech books and other associated crap. I bought a bunch of plastic tubs for papers, screws, cables and other minutae, and it seemed to work great.
I think the plastic-tub-and-shelf method is good because you can basically see everything in front of you... there's no drawers or pirate's chests full of stuff so you have to go hunting through them to find anything. If I want a cable, it's in the cable tub, right *there*.
I'm moving at the moment, so I put my shelves into storage... and boom, the entire house is suddenly full of techy crap, door to door. Amazing how that happens.
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.
Those of us who have been married for 19 years simply have 19 more years worth of extra sh!t laying around in the basement.
Earlier this month, we (my wife) got fed up with the mess, so we (I) started cleaning out as much of the old crap as I could bear to part with. Old hard drives (anything smaller than 1GB -- gone) an old never-supported parallel port scanner, old computers (Pentium class or older,) an old cassette tape deck, old cordless phones, several dozen ISO-8 bit and ISO-16 bit PC cards, and literally fifty pounds of RS-232 cables. Basically, if it didn't currently work, or was older than about 1995, it went on the rubbish heap.
Recycle
I then started pulling the NiCd batteries out of the old cordless phones, and realized I had a lot more than just batteries that needed recycling. I got two garbage cans: a large one for plastics and metals, and a smaller one for circuit boards or anything with solder. I then spent a few hours with a screwdriver, prybar, hammer, wire cutters, etc., and segregated out the electronic boards, soldered connectors, etc. Anything with lead still on it went in the circuit board bin. The batteries went in a separate battery pail. All the rest of the metals and plastics went in the other bin.
Our recycling center charges for electronics by the pound. (I think it was about $0.60/lb. An old 13" TV set cost me $12.00 to dispose of last month.) I haven't taken the circuit board bin it to the recycling center yet, but I ended up with only about 15 pounds of circutry in it. Much less than the aggregate total of the hardware, cases and frames that had been piled up down there. The rest went with the ordinary recycling or trash. I also haven't gotten rid of the old cabling yet, I am assuming they'll take copper wire at no charge.
Finally, that which I had decided to save went into clear Rubbermaid bins. I kind of groupd them into "internal computer components", "external computer components", "other electronic components", "other electronic gear (telephones, etc.)", "computer cabling", "110 VAC house wiring", and "low voltage house wiring" bins. I also found a surprisingly large number of drill bits, screwdrivers, and other assorted tools piled in with my junk. My toolbox is now full again!
I'm not as "thrilled" as I'd like to be with the new organization of my stuff, but it's a lot better than it was. And I'd like to be able to tell you I found a way to tell my currently-obsolete-but-still-hanging-onto-it stuff from my I-should-save-this-because-I-will-really-use-it-in -the-future stuff. But I didn't find that magic formula.
John
...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.
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
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.
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 get rid of my old junk here and people actually buy it!
I kept the 333MHz machines and the 166MHz machines. They're powered off in the basement, but I kept them all, just in case I want a dumb little server for something.
Anyway, no, the rest of the stuff was not useful. I'm sure someone could have claimed a 66MHz 486-SX would have been worth something to someone, but I'm seriously not interested in wasting my time finding that someone. (I'd rather waste it posting to Slashdot.) It's certainly not worth the $25 worth of hassles I might hope to get on eBay.
None of it was particularily power-efficient, either. "Watts per computron" are far higher than a new PC. The annual cost of operating an old box would be higher than the cost of purchasing a $300 1.4GHz Athlon machine.
And putting it out for the thieves is the same reason I didn't put it in the trash bin in the first place -- once the idiot thief realized he'd stolen garbage, he'd either throw it in his garbage; or more likely he'd throw it in a ditch or alley. The same is basically true of anyone dumb enough to buy it on eBay, too. Recycling wouldn't have happened. This way, I know all that lead stayed out of the waste stream. Hey, it's my crap, I can at least take that little bit of responsibility for it.
John