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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?"
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.
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