Finding things

[Stephen FollowsParticipant @stephenfollows82099]

A good tip for finding that elusive item:

Look for something else. Over many years I have found many things that were previously lost when I looked for something else. Never fails!

[Stephen FollowsParticipant @stephenfollows82099]

[JuddyParticipant @juddy]

Yes, or buy another one and the lost one will turn up as soon as the new one arrives

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Lidl had some packs of reflective coloured tape a couple of months ago which were quite cheap, and I like cheap, so I bought a pack and taped up the stuff I use a lot

all my ratchet spanners are orange, my favourite screwdriver has yellow, the nest of plugs in one corner has a triangular orange bit suck on the drill plug and a green square on the grinder plug kinda thing, red is on other oft used bits

Definitely makes life a bit easier and more efficient because colours can be so much easier to spot

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by Juddy on 24/03/2022 14:38:18:

Yes, or buy another one and the lost one will turn up as soon as the new one arrives

Not just turn up, but be discovered right next to the place you decide to store the new one. I've got a boring head that did that.

regards Martin

To be fair it was not exactly lost, I just forgot I had bought it and found another at a good price at a show. Remember those.

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Yesterday I had three things disappear first was my epoxy glue to repair something for the wife. then a file I was using put down to do something else and then something else the worst part is not remembering what the third thing was.

And finally today I lost my handle for the milling vise and where was it still on the vise normally I remove it and place it in the draw underneath

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Keep everything in it's own special place for that feeling of satisfaction on the rare occasions when something is where you expect it to be.

S.

[Pete RimmerParticipant @peterimmer30576]

Keep your workspace organised and tidy. I used to be an awfully messy worker. I would get any tool I needed out to use and just keep getting stuff out and leaving it out until the benches were heaped up, floor full of mes and parts scattered wherever I could find room for them. When I finished work for the evening I would either tidy up or just shut the door on the mess and then I would be reluctant to go out there another night, or the whole evening would be spent straightening the place up again.

First I decided to organise my stuff so I have drawer units for all my manual tools and small items. Bisley drawers are great for this with home-made dividers. I got rid of any wall-hanging parts trays because they wasted a lot of space and just gathered clutter. Swapped them for proper shelving and stackable totes.

Then last year i started a new regime. No matter what I'm doing I stop about every hour, and not longer than two hours, put every tool away, tidy any materials, clear the bench and sweep the floor if there's mess on it. Then I get out what tools I need even if it's something I have just put away. This might sound like a lot of effort but done every hour it's only a minute or two's work. Now I have a constantly tidy workshop, I can find any tool, I always have a bit of bench space to set stuff down on, I can find any dropped item no matter how small and I don't dread opening the door, I just walk in and start work. My work output has dramatically increased and all it costs me is a minute or two an hour.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Agreed. Once I start losing things among the workshop detritus, I stop work and have a clean up, starting at one end of the work area and working my way along until completed at the other end. Almost always find what I am looking for along the way.

And like Pete Rimmer, I tend to tidy up as I go along, and always tidy up before going in for the night, so next time the I walk into a nice pleasant tidy shop ready to start work straight away. Probably a habit drummed in as an apprentice, where usually the workspace was taken over by the next shift and if you left them a mess, you heard about it in no uncertain terms!

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

The worst thing is a tidy workshop ! You have a "thingy" you can't classify it properly, so it gets stowed away in some other category box or drawer. Now it is lost forever !

However, I must admit that the working space decreases as untidiness increases.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Posted by Pete Rimmer on 24/03/2022 19:04:18:

First I decided to organise my stuff

This can be fatal. I lots of things I can't find that used to have a place to live and I can remember the 'organise' event when I decided to put them somewhere that would be the' obviously sensible' new place. haven't seen them since.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

This is a cutting my father took 30 – 40 years ago – orientation as per usual.

[Mike HurleyParticipant @mikehurley60381]

Sometimes, just go through the workshop and sling out anything that fits under the premise of ' I've had this for x years, don't remember wher it came from or why I kept it & will I infact EVER use it? – no! '

You'll free up a little space / clutter each time giving room to store / organise the important stuff.

I used to be a horder, but one day just got fed up with falling over stuff and having to remove 6 old boxes to find something I needed to use, I gradually started to de-clutter (not going mad though) and to be honest I don't think I can put my hand up and say I've had an episode since where I think – Oh I wish I'd saved so and so…..

My workshop isn't paricularly tidy & I doubt it ever will be, but it is definately more ' user friendly ' now

Just my own humble opinion. regards, Mike

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

it's even worse when the workshop overflows into the house where there are I think still boxes of books packed not for the house move to here, but to the one previously… other than one book I bought and started to read about six months ago, and have not seen since.

One of my biggest problems was not only hoarding but also acquiring. Of course we all need four lathes, two bench-drills, two welding-sets (used as little as possible due to lack of skill), any number of unsorted UNC/F taps and dies, BSP taps far bigger than any pipe fittings in model-engineering and household plumbing, automotive tools no longer used if ever, and umpteen umpti-plicates of hand tools… doesn't one?

Not sure what's under the bench…. other than a wonderful pile of "come-in-handy" metal including lots of bits made only to be scrapped weeks, months or years later due to unforeseeable mistakes (in a project for which there are no existing drawings).

At work I used the term "garden shed computing" in response to one of my superiors wanting a more powerful computer in the lab. He was filling it with hundreds of temporary test files not intended for the finished work, most with names meaningless unless he'd listed them, which I doubt he had. I had to explain, "That PC is like a garden shed so full of old tins of paint, knackered garden tools, old car bits, abandoned sports gear and long-forgotten stuff inaccessible now anyway, that you need a bigger shed!"

Indeed, completing the circle this PC, has both the latest smaller-scale version of TurboCAD and (encouraged by others on this forum) SolidEdge Community. Errr… Yes I can and do use TC, occasionally, in orthographic mode only; but SE(C) which I thought might be easier to learn, proved impenetrable. It's still there though.

Just as well it's a very big digital "garden shed"!

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Posted by Speedy Builder5 on 25/03/2022 09:13:52:

This is a cutting my father took 30 – 40 years ago – orientation as per usual.

I think my Dad might have written that. After he passed on to the great workshop in the sky, after my two brothers and I had rounded up every tool and motorbike part we could possibly want, including for me the old Drummond lathe and all sorts of tools and bits and pieces to go with, after the local charity shop/men's shed blokes came and took a large trailer load of useful stuff away, it still took two men with a small truck two trips to take the leftovers to the tip. All from a two -car garage. I am sure it was the prototype for Dr Who's Tardis, bigger on the inside than out.

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

I liked SpeedyBuilder's precis of "De Bello Gallico", but like when I found my bag of unused keyrings, I wondered what it was doing where it was …

My remedy has always been to rebuild/move workshop or move house. Then you get to inspect everything you've got, chuck out the stuff that's no longer usable or relates to some defunct side-hobby, followed 3-6 months of relatively relaxed order – before the double-jointed fingers of Chaos insinuate themselves through the interstices of your configuration and the status-quo-ante is restored.

[RobinParticipant @robin]

I do suffer from losing things that are in plain sight, right under my nose. The simplest solution is to get someone else to look for it. Wife dropped her cigarette lighter in the bathroom, searched for hours, I found it in about 5 seconds flat. Perhaps because I had no preconceived notion about which direction it had taken?

[Nick WheelerParticipant @nickwheeler]

Posted by Mike Hurley on 25/03/2022 09:22:49:

Sometimes, just go through the workshop and sling out anything that fits under the premise of ' I've had this for x years, don't remember wher it came from or why I kept it & will I infact EVER use it? – no! '

You'll free up a little space / clutter each time giving room to store / organise the important stuff.

I used to be a horder, but one day just got fed up with falling over stuff and having to remove 6 old boxes to find something I needed to use, I gradually started to de-clutter (not going mad though) and to be honest I don't think I can put my hand up and say I've had an episode since where I think – Oh I wish I'd saved so and so…..

My workshop isn't paricularly tidy & I doubt it ever will be, but it is definitely more ' user friendly ' now

Just my own humble opinion. regards, Mike

Mike, that's exactly what I did/do.

All the little might come in handy bits went in the bin. Gained half a shelf, and the deepest drawer in my toolbox. Why the hell was I storing chunks of metal stock in an £800 toolbox?

I recently cleared the paint shelf, by disposing of most the part used tins. A couple of them rattled, and one of them had a pre-decimal price sticker on it. They're not mine, which meant I couldn't just skip the lot.

Blow moulded cases: if the tool has lots of little pieces, I keep them. Reluctantly. And line them up vertically, rather than stacking them. Label them(permanent marker) so you know what's in them just by looking. Otherwise the box goes in the bin, and the tools get grouped. Beware the household hoarder that will take the empty box back out of the bin because it might be useful. They then wedge it in the precarious stack of similar items that never are. They also complain that there isn't space to do anything.

Do you really need 7 different things of something you only use every 73 months?

Keep a small bin in the workshop. Empty it often.

I used to be a hoarder. I have the certificates to prove it

[Andrew TinsleyParticipant @andrewtinsley63637]

After 60 years, I had a mega sort out and found 8 ball joint splitters of various types. Each one purchased when I couldn't find one, when needed,

Andrew.

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

3 days ago I lost my car keys. I'm pedantic with them.. either in my left pocket or the key bowl. I searched the barn , the yard, the chairs.. berated OH cos when they went missing 3yrs ago she'd borrowed them. An hour of searching and found in my RIGHT pocket

pgk

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

I lost my motorcycle keys at work, phoned wife to bring spare keys, found keys in pocket that I never use. Another occasion lost keys again, wife had a housefull of kids so could not leave, I said I would start walking and would meet when she was free, I had walked 5 miles plus and turned down a lift before we finally caught up with each other.

Mike

[Thor 🇳🇴Participant @thor]

I understand I'm not the only one having trouble remembering where I put things.

Thor

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

When we moved house and workshop three years ago I packed most of the hand tools, machine accessories and other gubbins into a variety of wheeled tool chests. Whilst most of the drawers are themed there are, inevitably, quite a few drawers with an eclectic mix of miscellaneous gubbins. A year ago I decided I needed my Record "Imp" vice. I went through every drawer (and a couple of boxes) twice and could not find it. I came to the conclusion that I must have left it in the old workshop (as seen in my recent post of my Pillar Too). Last week, while looking for something completely different I came across it lying on its side in a shallow drawer – hiding in plain sight.

The point of this ramble is to ask the question: Why does my eye/ brain not see what it is looking for? Is it because my mind's eye sees the vice upright and fastened to a bench and doesn't recognise the recumbent vice as a vice. I don't know but it can be infuriating. Mind you it did encourage me to make the instrument makers vice from the casting I've had forever (and could find).

Keep at it guys.

Rod

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

When I left the Air Force after 22 years service we moved from Lincolnshire back home to East Sussex, a number of the boxes of stuff were never unpacked and found their way into the loft, it was seven years before I got round to unpacking them, it was surprising how much stuff that we forgot we had, that was 35 years ago that we moved here and we are still in the same house, vowed to never move again having moved a number of times when posted from station to station in the Air Force. Dave W

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

I've lived in the same house for 88 years. There are drawers that I've probably opened twice in all that time.

Roy

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