I face this all the time. Too Much Stuff. There is only one real solution:
use it or lose it! In my shop I have machinery, tooling, tools, supplies,
stock, and projects underway. I took a bit of space and built some shelves
and got a bunch of big boxes and now when I get a project underway and then
it gets put on hold for some time (i.e. waiting on a Mcmaster order or waiting
for another project) it goes into a box on those shelves. That helped a lot.
I also gulped hard and deprioritized some bigger stuff like my pressure washer,
a diesel-fired Landa hot water attachment that went with it, some great cast
iron crane wheels, my salmon smoker and my welding rod ovens, and sold them
off. From that I got an entire room which is now used for band practice. Yes,
sometimes I miss my pressure washer! But 4 people in my house use the music
studio *all the time*, so it has a higher priority. I also sold my 10 ton
boom truck. Out she goes. Got me a huge piece of driveway back.

I am pretty ruthless when it comes to stuff like boxes of switches or oddball
stuff. I got one of those sets of plastic drawers back in the mid-80s and I
put a bunch of stuff like that in those boxes. I carted them around for 20
years and then pitched most of it and regretted keeping them that long. I
keep now what I might use in projects I'm currently envisioning, or items
that are hard to find and can always be sold (e.g. Square D start/stop buttons
in enclosures) but basically there is another principle that really applies
he let the store store. Buy what you need.

My dad had a thing about nails. In one of our kitchen pantry cupboards were
jars full of nails. I never once saw one of them go out and into the house,
but by God he never let anyone touch those jars of nails. How much is a whole
cupboard worth of space in a kitchen pantry worth over 40 years? Jeez.

You need to be ruthlessly honest with yourself. (I believe that some of us
have found our way to this hobby just because our subconscious minds have
guided us here just to learn this lesson!) Do you USE any of those switches
or miscellaneous on projects? Do you really?

Grant Erwin
Kirkland, Washington


GTO69RA4 wrote:
OK, the Big Question that hangs over the heads of so many of us. I have a large
(for a basement shop anyway) stash of all kinds of stuff. Supplies, fasteners,
parts, equipment, whatever. My problem isn't storage per se (so recommending
Vidmar cabinets won't help in this case), because I have vast ranks of shelves,
cabinets, and boxes with everything in them, but the fact that my neat storage
is occupying most of the spatial volume. Running out of room for people and
tools.

What kind of tactics do you guys take to maintaining stashes of things without
it getting out of hand? I'm not talking just junk here--mostly good stuff that
now and then I find myself dipping into. Lots of boxes of switches, oddball
screws, whatever. What kind of "supply line" do you keep? How much backstocked
stuff? What do you do when it's time to thin out the flock?

Sorry for asking such a broad question, but it's a lot easier to work through
this kind of thing with outside input. Or rather outside input that doesn't say
"well why don't you just toss all this out" while looking and your drill press
and bandsaw. You guys must have developed methods to deal with the madness.

GTO(John)