Courtesy Stock.XCHNG It’s not likely I’ll remember to use a comb to hold a nail next time I need to hammer, but it would nice if I could keep track of handy tips like this. |
Does anyone else ever get “neat idea” overload? I recently received an email with photos of neat ideas—like using a comb to hold a nail to be hammered … no more bruised thumbs! Another idea was to use old bread-wrapper closing tabs to label computer and other electrical cords. A third was to rubber band a sock over a vacuum hose to search for lost items, like earrings.
These are all great ideas, and I am so tempted to print a copy, which I can then keep with all the other neat ideas I’ve clipped from magazines—not to mention the great ideas that are in magazines I have yet to clip.
The problem with all of them is that when I need to pound a nail into something, I’m probably not going to remember the comb or the wrapper tab or the … well, you get it. I’ll probably just hold the nail like I always have and hit my thumb again like I often do. I do know I’m not going to go to my files of neat ideas to review them for nail-holding gizmos. Perhaps I should for the sake of my thumb, but I know I won’t.
So what good is it to print, clip and file all these ideas? For one thing, it reminds us just how often the same ideas keep turning up in the same magazines. My wife and I joke that one “how to” publication we get runs the same story every issue, just changing a detail or two on the project.
So why do I keep clipping and subscribing? Perhaps it is just the hope that I’ll recall some of the ideas when I need them most. Stranger things have happened!
