Occasionally, a one-off item enters my life which I would never bother to buy. A semi-consumable, like rubber bands or tissue paper which is reusable but wears out relatively quickly, and cheap/small enough that I receive them randomly. Because of those factors, in the store they come in large enough packs I would never use all them and therefore never buy them.
My baseline and target stock of these items is zero. Still, when the odd one crops up I know it's reusable and useful enough that it feels bad to toss.
My house rule is to immediately get rid of them.
If I always had some, even if I wasn't deliberately purchasing them, it would be easy to manage. I do that with plastic bags, for example. I know that's a thing I always have in stock.
However with these one-off items, because I only occasionally have a very limited amount, I instead have to remember to remember that I have it when I need it because otherwise I'll assume that I don't, and it'll never get used. Each time I remember, I then have to recall if I actually have it or not, and which temporary home I stored it in.
That's way too much work to use up a rubber band or two. By definition, these aren't items I need on a regular basis. Easier to just get rid of them and make do without. The few times a rubber band is necessary, I find some alternative solution with things that I do keep in permanent stock. Twist ties, elastics, clips, ziplocs, even cup sleeves once.
That's all theory though. In practice, I dump the one-off items in a purgatory pile in a corner. If it turns out I have a use for something, I can fish it out without going through the main trash can. No possible remorse of throwing out something I could have used the day after, because by the time I actually throw it out I had an exceedingly good reason to or I had entirely forgotten it existed.
It's not a formalized bin like the trash can. It moves around every few months. If I do any major cleaning it goes straight to trash, then regrows elsewhere. The rest of the time, when I don't have a pressing need to clear space, I leave it alone.
I could start a junk drawer, but I'd forget it was there and the items are slightly too variable in volume to have a designated fixed-size home. Instead I typically corralled it into an old packaging or delivery box, most of which are an awkward shape and size that I don't want to keep for permanent reuse, but come in handy for temporary storage. If it's unsightly or taking up too much space, it's an incentive for me to clean up.
I don't want to waste my life storing items I won't use.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
Titles are always a bit strange. I don't particularly care for most of my titles, I just need something functional to keep track of posts. My current workflow happens to encourage writing the title before the post, so they tend to be particularly plain as I don't fully know what I'm writing about yet.
Sometimes it comes in handy, though. Started a tangent on this one and realized it didn't match the title. I could have renamed it to be about general organization, but I wanted to keep the smaller scope. It's not so bad to have something to keep you on track, however utilitarian it is.
- Rew