Hey all. It is no secret that clutter in the space continues to be an issue, with members leaving materials for inactive projects hanging around for months at a time. Our volunteer corps is making a project of reducing that clutter, starting with the wood stock.
In the next week, you need to make a point to label any materials you have around the space, no matter how well tucked away it is. Next weekend, we are going to toss any materials that are left unlabelled or that have a parking pass older than 6 months, or declare them otherwise up for grabs.
Also, just as a reminder, if you’re not actively using something–as in, if you have a large quantity of wood just waiting for a project–you need to take it home. The new parking passes give you fifteen days to keep your materials around. If you’re actively working on a project, it’s fine to leave stuff here, but going forward, the volunteer corps are going to be a lot more forward about clearing out materials and projects with expired parking passes.
Do members get a chance to claim any wood material that would be thrown out if we take it home? I need some practice wood for some joinery and I saw a few pieces in the scrap that I had planned on turning into a mirror frame. Again, I could store them at home if need be but I don’t want to jump the gun and take someone else’s material…
Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. If you happen to be around when we’re clearing out, I’d be inclined to say sure, but we’ve got a slowly developing method to the madness of this, and I don’t want to create a situation where members have reason to have beef with each other.
If a piece of wood is sitting in the rack unlabelled, though, you can always post about it to the talk site (here!) and ask if anyone was planning on using it. If the answer is no, it’s fine to go for it. Or if it’s labelled and its been around for a long time, you can always reach out to the member who owns it and ask if they still want it.
Yeah, sorry if I gave the impression that I wanted to plunder the stuff with tags. I was trying to figure out if there would be a kind of “grace” period between when the team determined something to be abandoned and when it was thrown out. I wanted to know when that period would be so I could rescue anything before it hits the trash.
Nope, you didn’t give that impression at all. This has been something that we’ve always been worried about with policing the abandoned stuff—not wanting to create the feeling that folks are policing storage when they find something they like so that they can “steal” it. This isn’t a problem when we’re consistently policing storage, which space force will help us solve.
This is totally us (me) being worried not any reaction to your question.
The weather conspired against our efforts to clear out the space last week. But, we still need to get things either labeled with a current parking pass or taken out of the space. Remember that a parking pass is valid for fifteen days.
It’s a balmy 40 degrees today, so maybe this is a good time to swing by and make sure all your stuff is labelled.
Thank you to everyone who came in to label your things and who took home projects they weren’t actively working on. Doing that really helps reduce clutter around the space, which is going to make the space a lot more pleasant for all the members to use. There is still a lot of stuff that we need to clear out before this will be apparent, but this is a good first step.
In the interest of full disclosure, our next step is going to be to clear out anything that is either not labeled or that has an expired parking pass on it. Anything that is thus abandoned, we’ll put up for grabs and devise a system for letting members come claim it.
Going forward, we’ll do clean ups like this more regularly. Remember that the life of a parking pass is now 15 days, so if you’re not immediately planning on using something, it’s really best not to bring it to the space.
I thought I had much of my stuff out, however my Dad took a picture of some of my wood pieces and asked if he could use them… I was surprised that it was there.
If anyone finds my name on stuff I’d like the chance to take it home, but I didn’t find it last time I went through the place.
I also just want to be very clear: in doing this, we’re not out to ruthlessly chuck your stuff in the dumpster or arbitrarily reallocate your supplies to other members. We’re moving forward with this carefully and with consideration to our members.
We’re starting with stuff that has been lingering in the space longer than 6 months, which is a surprising amount of stuff.
