Boxed in
Moving is exciting! New places, new friends, new things to see and do, new restaurants and shopping – I love the moving experience. Except for one thing: Moving also stinks….
Moving is exciting! New places, new friends, new things to see and do, new restaurants and shopping – I love the moving experience. Except for one thing: Moving also stinks.
Formally setting up my shop is still some weeks away, so everything’s in the boxes they were packed in. And because I’m a knucklehead, in some cases I didn’t mark boxes carefully. In other cases, there are just so many different things in a box – especially when those things are small – it was impossible to accurately label it at all. The bottom line is that I can’t find anything.
Sure, a box marked “cordless/batteries/chargers” is helpful and obvious. But half a dozen boxes marked “hardware/fasteners” is neither. Here are two perfect examples.
1) Because our new kitchen has hardwood floors I got sliding casters for the bottoms of our dining chairs. To install them I needed a 1/16" drill bit, and a nail set. I’d included a set of bits in my toolbox for just these kinds of tasks, but didn’t think I’d need a nail set. I own several, but have no idea which of the dozens of boxes they might be squirreled away in.
2) I also got some nice Rev-A-Shelf sliding cabinet organizers for the kitchen. Although most of them came with fasteners, not all of them did. I’d included a variety of fasteners in my toolbox, but sure enough I didn’t have the size or gauge I needed.
Fortunately, there’s a Big Box store nearby so with a quick trip I was able to acquire a nail set and the right screws. Of course, I’ve had to make that trip a lot more times than I’ve described above. On the plus side, I consider most of what I had to get to be “consumables.” In other words, things you have to buy periodically anyway – fasteners, drill/driver bits, wall hangers and anchors, cleaning and finishing stuff, etc. And while I’m getting a little tired of making repeated trips to the Big Box, I’d eventually have had to make those trips at some time in the future, so to me it seems that it all comes out as a wash.
At least, that’s the self-delusion I’m sticking to.
A.J.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
