Challenge #02433-F243: One More Thing
Do it yourselfers have a problem, "I needa", and after multiple trips to the local hardware store you acquire stuff. Which leads to 'innovative storage'. -- Anon Guest
It starts with a project that should be simple, but you need more than what is present in the allegedly simple kit. The people who put that kit together assumed that you were starting from a certain level of familiarity. So you go out to acquire the missing items of necessity.
Once there, you realise that there's a few items that are actually better than the ones in the kit, and it couldn't hurt to have suchlike for the next time. That's how it starts. Once returned with your new items, the kit's instructions have left out a step, a tool, a piece, and now the race is on to find out what it is. In the process, you discover that the kit is absolute garbage and literally everything in it needs to be replaced with something better because it's all made out of non-standard, unmatchable parts.
If you are phenomenally lucky, the replacement of the kit takes one trip. However, the odds against that are so astronomical that you are more likely to create a new reality by snapping your fingers. After that is finally accomplished, comes finding out that the tools you have are inadequate for the task, and you need to upgrade all of them. Eventually, though, the project is finished, and you can relax.
At least, you can relax until you realise that you can fix another little thing that is mildly awry in your environment with just a few more things. That's how it all snowballs. Now, keep in mind that you invested your earnings in a lot of these things. Even though they were sub-adequate for the initial project, they are still inherently useful. Perhaps for lighter tasks, but not the heavy lifting. Before you know it, you own three different brands of electric drill, two of them battery powered and one with a need for access to the main power via a cable. They are all necessary, and none of them can be thrown away. Besides, you paid good money for those things.
Every new project just adds to them. New pieces. New adapters. New tools to do that tricky little thing that complicated the last project you worked on. Specialty pieces for an embellishment you decided you needed. Then, if you are not prescient or careful, the workspace becomes dominated with... stuff.
You've been meaning to make shelves for them all, but you can't find the pieces you acquired for them because they're buried under the tools you were going to use and the tools you only needed that one time, and the tools you got but cannot return because they're faulty pieces of crap but you no longer have the receipt or the box it came in... and the boxes for other tools that work just fine but you can't throw away because -what if?
Thus, you go out for replacement stuff because you can't find the stuff you swear you had. Which leads to ever-increasing amounts of mess in ever-decreasing amounts of space. Until you either organise or build a new workspace, which will of course need new tools. Oh! And maybe one of those spiffy tool chests. Why not two? And a proper workbench for everything, because it's way past time...
No matter how good the intentions, they always end the same way, with you moving on to a bigger and better workspace much like a hermit crab moving to a bigger and better shell.
Of such a process, JOAT Tosheroons are made.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / kusipunchik]
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Or learn how to make tools do jobs they weren't necessarily intended for but are capable of nonetheless XD
See: Fifteen Ways To Break That Expensive-Ass Tool ;)
ROFL Reminds me of how my father would run to fix something. He was a mechanic. He would say "Once I've fixed it, it doesn't DARE break down again, it knows better"