Thursday, June 25, 2020

A win for hoarding



Every so often, I seriously consider that I need to make dramatic cuts in my stash of bits'n'pieces. And then I realise this would be a bad thing. 

I'm working on an urgent and very time-consuming magazine project at the moment. For the wiring up, I needed some DIN sockets and so included them in an order for materials. When the arrived, I'd selected the wrong pin pitch. My controller wouldn't plug in, and I was loathe to change the plug on this as it wouldn't then work with other layouts.

I have a shoebox full of electrical "stuff" and rooting around in there I found this panel thing. I don't know where it came from or what it was built to do - but it incorporated two of the vital sockets. A few minutes work removing them and I was in business.

If I'd not had that box of junk I'd have been stuffed. My rush project would have ground to a halt. So, a win for hoarding.

Does anyone else car to admit being dug out of a hole by a similar stash, or it just me that keeps stuff?


7 comments:

Duncan Young said...

Ditto. Throw nothing away. the day you do, you rue it.

Anonymous said...

As my father used to say "everything comes in useful once in 7 years" as long as you can remembered where you might have stashed it in the first place !!

Steve Cheetham said...

Agreed ! The hard bit is having a good enough memory or storage system so you can find it when you need it - several times I have bought new items I actually had in stock already...

Huw Griffiths said...

Hmmm ... DIN 5A's ... Your controller wouldn't, by any chance, be a Gaugemaster?

As for being "saved by the stash", I suspect this must have happened to just about everyone.

The reason I say "just about" is that this might not have happened to the minority who always keep everything neat / tidied away.

I suspect that a number of these people just need to keep on buying stuff they had until yesterday.

Bernhard Beck said...

Been there. Done that.
I'm still raiding my layout control panel from 10 years ago for parts.

Phil Parker said...

Ahhh yes, the old problem of actually finding the stuff that you've stashed when you actually need it!

Colin Murdoch said...

I’m often going out and buying stuff to do a specific job, then bringing it home and putting it somewhere safe. Then when I come to do the job some time late (3 or 4 months perhaps) can I find it? Of course not.