[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.