[zyxley]

This but slightly more organized is pretty much the standard answer for anti-hoarding: put all your stuff away, keep track of what you actually use over the next week/month/year, and get rid of anything that hasn't been touched.

[sliverstorm]

I think it deserves to be slightly more nuanced than that. There is a category of things that are small, used rarely, but very necessary. Medicine & tools always come to mind. For me, if I don't use my screwdrivers for a year that doesn't mean I should get rid of my screwdrivers.

[dublinben]

Arguably, it means just that. If you only use a tool once a year, you should just borrow/rent them when you actually do need them. Our lives are cluttered with occasionally used 'just in case' items that we really don't need.

[et-al]

That's minimalism taken to an extreme, which is just as thoughtless as hoarding.

A screwdriver costs less than $5 and takes a minimal amount of space to store. Yes, the slippery slope is when you have a thousand tools falling out of your closet, but again, thought and moderation.

The "if I haven't used it in the past year" rule is a great idea overall, but it's not appropriate for this example. Now if we're talking about a ball-bearing extractor, yeah rent/borrow that unless your livelihood depends on it.

[foobarian]

Think of it hierarchically. Instead of a screwdriver let's talk about a box of tools. You may not use the 4-40 tap very often, if ever, but you probably use something from the toolbox at least once a week.

[wonder_er]

This calculus changes if you assign a cost to storing possessions.

If there's no cost, great. Keep everything. If there is a cost, that once-a-year item might not make the cut.

[et-al]

Yup, I think we're all in agreement that there's a cost to storing possessions. The issue folks were debating is that the once-per-x rule isn't appropriate for certain items because:

- the item takes up a negligible amount of space (fractions of pennies), and its usefulness is huge when you need it. Also, factor in the value of immediate access (e.g. fire extinguisher).

- some things you don't use, but are required to have (birth certificates)

Again, my main point was thoughtfulness with ownership. And it doesn't always require breaking out an Excel spreadsheet and amortizing costs and calculating expected values.

[Retric]

The problem is it might cost 5$ to buy, but buying it also takes effort. IMO, the way around this is to keep a good multi tool which is a so so version of a lot of things and then only the real tool if you are going to do a real project.

Cellphone camera good enough? Ditch your actual camera.

[dsfyu404ed]

Your cell phone camera can act as a camera but not as well. A multi-tool usually has one Phillips and on slotted screwdriver. Of course those are never the sizes you need.

There's a point where it becomes very hard to reduce item count without greatly increasing the frequency that the task at hand can't be performed with the existing set of items.

[Retric]

A Philips screwdriver may or may not be used for a year, a multi bit screwdriver has much better odds. But the trade off is all about frequency. If you need to swap license plates not having the correct tool is not a major time sink. Rebuilding an engine and you need the right tools.

[jacalata]

There are inarguably items that should be held"just in case", like an epipen. The interesting discussion is how to identify those items - factors like cost of acquisition, immediacy of need when it occurs, cost of storage, etc.

[ceejayoz]

Just don't try this with a birth certificate.

Jokes aside, are there really places you can rent a screwdriver for a day? And is that really the appropriate solution?

[dllthomas]

http://oaklandlibrary.org/locations/tool-lending-library

> The Oakland Tool Lending Library currently offers over 5,000 tools available for loan, as well as books and how-to videos and DVDs. The tools can be used for a variety of purposes, including home improvement, remodeling and repairs, gardening and landscaping and seismic retrofit. This is a free service to Oakland, Emeryville, and Piedmont residents and property owners.

[rubicon33]

I actually laughed at the idea of renting a screwdriver.

[dragonwriter]

> Jokes aside, are there really places you can rent a screwdriver for a day?

There's places where you can buy them and return them a day later for a full refund.

[ceejayoz]

That doesn't sound all that ethical, and you've now spent two 30-60 minute round trips to a store for want of a $5 tiny tool you used to own.

[sliverstorm]

Sometimes it's actually completely all above-board. You buy the tool- but it's well-worn and has no packaging, because a hundred other people have bought & returned the same tool before you.

Autozone is one example, offering this service for things like bearing presses and radiator pressurizers and so forth. They don't make any money on the tool in this case; the play is, if you have access to <expensive special tool> you'll do the work yourself and buy parts & consumables from them.

BUT, you're totally right about the time & gas, and there's also the issue where you always discover you need tool X right after removing the engine.

[gnud]

If everyone followed this logic, who would you borrow from?

[pbhjpbhj]

This is where an [idealised] conception of communism wins, there's a local workshop with all the tools kept in common between people in the area. If you're away from home, you just go to the local workshop.

Strikes me as an idiotic waste of resources that a street of a hundred houses would have 50, say, power drills. Most likely they're inferior for costs purposes, they break because they're designed to (capitalism FTW), they're unnecessary duplication and so waste resources.

We've seriously missed the mark with design of our communities/society.

[mod]

I use my drill almost every day. I can't have it down the road at the tool library. Presumably I also can't check it out indefinitely or demand it if I feel like my project is more important than someone else's.

If you take an object that I use less frequently, say a small tack hammer, I still need it when I need it. I need it for maybe 1 minute or less. I'm supposed to do what? Take my project down to the library, hit it with the hammer, haul it back home? Go borrow the hammer and take it back? Now I've cost myself more in time & effort than it would have cost to just own & store the hammer.

Does your solution only apply to more expensive items? More specialized? How does it account for discrepancies of usage patterns?

What if I need the work-light but I'll interrupt someone's project?

No, I think I'll just have my own set of tools, thanks.

I would be okay with a "library for [tools, whatever]" for people who don't often need a screwdriver or corkscrew or something, I guess--but I'm not going to use it. We have an approximation, with maker spaces, companies that loan tools (auto zone etc), neighbors, and tool rentals. (I don't use those either.)

[pbhjpbhj]

I use a drill every couple of months, I think that's relatively high usage across the entire population.

FWIW it sounds like a good place for community members to access tools would be at the house you live in.

[monknomo]

The guy in town running the (presumably) lucrative home tool rental store?

Do these things exist in urban areas? Seems useful for apartment dwellers who don't have the space for anything more than a tiny toolkit anyhow

[dllthomas]

http://oaklandlibrary.org/locations/tool-lending-library

[monknomo]

Huh, cool concept!

[maxerickson]

Lots of box stores rent out tools.

A while back I rented a nice hammer drill for $30 instead of buying a shit one from the same store for $50. For a more niche tool like that, it works out great not to have a bunch of money invested in nicer tools or a bunch of crap lying around.

[monknomo]

Sure, I know lots of the big boxes do, but I was imagining something in a downtown area accessible to a car-less urbanite

[dec0dedab0de]

A few years ago, on the bus home from work, I had a conversation with a mechanic who owned a shop in an economically disadvantaged area. He said that everyone on the block borrows tools from him, and he did it as a way of building a good rapport with his customers.

[35bge57dtjku]

You could just put a bunch of tools in a toolbox and figure you probably use the toolbox every week or every month.

[drivingmenuts]

I keep a small toolbag (heh-heh) that I stuff the essentials into: hammer, measuring tapes, screwdrivers, etc. My entire collection of useful tools (that aren't in the bag) would easily fit into a small UHaul box. Even though I rarely use them, knowing I have them helps keep me from panic buying.

[ourmandave]

You have to watch out for Thanksgiving. I own at least 4 potato mashers, cheese graters, and corkscrews. Each is a once-a-year item (for me) that gets stored during spring cleaning and is easier to replace than find again.

[mod]

At my house, we've used all of those items in the last ~2 weeks.

Cheese on salad and tacos, corkscrew when friends came over (it's part of a multi-use tool, anyhow), and potato masher all the time, lately on potatoes from my own garden!

[tedmiston]

Conveniently this has helped me every time I've moved. It's happened more out of engineer's laziness than anything else. Eventually you don't unpack a thing enough times that you accept owning it won't change your life.