Trying to collect some stuff that I'm considering selling (valve train parts, etc.) and am getting bit in the a$$ by what happened when we had a flood in the house a few months ago due to our washing machine overflowing big-time. Long story short is a lot of the stuff that was in various rooms in our house, including my basement / shop area, were simply shoved into contractor bags for the purpose of getting everything out of the house ASAP so the dry-out and repairs could begin.

Today, after finally finding certain parts I believe someone can use, I was unable to locate all the matching hardware that goes with 'em. Between the stacks of stuffed contractor bags and misc boxes which were jammed w/ everything possible in the effort to deal w/ the water issue, my stuff has been "thrown to the wind". Not saying anything was lost or stolen, but I have no idea how long it's gonna take me to find things now that I have a reason to.



PS - It's not like I didn't misplace stuff before the flood... but this is simply adding to the frustration level

Bummer, you could check with your insurance to see if they might cover it even though it was a couple of years back. I used to have an agent that worked miracles. but he has now retired

i go through the "i know it's here somewhere" syndrome all the time, so i know your frustration.
however, as my old man always said : "you'll always find it in the last place ya look"........

I have 3 reverse lights for my 70 Challenger.
The OEM cracked one.
The replacement one for the cracked one.
The replacement for the replacement of the cracked one because "I know it's here somewhere" but I don't know where.

One nice thing though, when you are rooting about trying to find a part and you come across another part you didn't remember having. Maybe you'll get to enjoy that in your hunt.

3 major Hurracane an a major flood. And each one made thed parts stashed even more messed up.
I know where very little is as was moved and moved. I had everything where I knew it was. Add in lots,was in attic so was moved to pit new duct work and insulation in.
I find everything but what I need and lots I did not know i even had.

Before the flood, all 5 pieces were together on the same shelf

Today I can locate only 3 of them... a couple hours of searching and the other 2 remain MIA

That kind of stuff is always in the last place you look

If possible, spreading it all out somewhere helps, but makes for a long day.
Labeled boxes or totes can then be used to keep it all organized.

Few things aggravate me as much as searching for stuff !

Try having a 34,000 sq ft shop full of parts and selling it! Having a bunch of friends over to move said parts to my rental building, 12K sq ft of parts moved to the upstairs of the building, and bringing enough home to fill a three car garage! I have been looking for lots of parts since then, and cannot find half of them...

I think its the nature of the hobby. We keep stuff we think is good, and put it someplace safe. Then one day we look for where that "safe" place was and can't find it. frustrating.
Then one day we are looking for a different part, and can't find the "safe" place we put it, but we find the last part we looked for the last time but couldn't find. The problem is, we don't need that part now, so we put it someplace else that we are sure is a safe place.

Throw in a move, or a disaster when stuff gets moved in a hurry, and the "safe place" plan, as poor as it was, goes right out the window. Then the stuff arrives in the "its here someplace". That is the point where we realize just how much storage space we have. That is how we get 2nd and 3rd backups of parts we think we are going to need. I know its here someplace. I've run across things I was looking for 3 years ago, but usually we fine that 1st replacement part right after we bought another one.

It gets worse as we get older.

years ago i misplaced a D cell Mag Lite> They were quite pricey at the time. I looked for 6 months or so and NADA. So I'm at he local big box checkout and there's a new replacement. I said, I'm done looking for it and bought the new one. I SWEAR i was not home more than a minute when I opened a seldom used cabinet in the laundry room and there it was on the top shelf

At my old place when I was putting my car back together after many years I couldn't find my torsion bars. I looked everywhere, and everywhere again, the closets, the attic etc etc. I finally gave up thinking I had left them at my previous house a few years before. Nope, when I moved I found them. They were on a shelf behind my driveshaft. When you looked on the shelf you could see under the driveshaft right to the wall. Correction, under the driveshaft, under the torsion bars, right to the wall lol. That driveshaft was probably the only thing that I didn't move in my search because I could see under it since the yokes held the tube off the shelf, much like the hexs on the end of a torsion bar.

This is one of those situations where I only need the two missing items cuz I have the other three pieces. If I sell the other pieces and then find the missing items later, I'll have no use for them and the likelihood of selling them separately is pretty slim. It's a complete "Gotcha!", unfortunately.

Yup - have many "extra" tools of same thing, thanks to exactly what you describe !!

This morning I found a bottle of pills I put up in a safe place where nobody would steal them and couldn't find them for the last 4 months.

My favorite gotcha was when I couldn't find my small vise grips. Looked and looked nowhere to be found. I was fuming because I was convinced the kids lost them. A few days later I was under my truck that had been out of commission for several months while I rebuilt the transmission. My small vise grips were clamped to the exhaust stud holding the exhaust pipe up.

My dad always blamed me for losing his tools and was convinced I lost a good pair of his vice grips.

Years later I "inherited" his Powerwagon and was crawling around under it. Guess what I found clamped underneath...

my brother was always grabbing my tools. i usually found most of them working on his cars, or cars he had worked on.
i told him just a few weeks ago he could have all of my tools when i croaked. his response was, sure, if i would also include the shipping to him, which is across the country.

Family

I had nearly a complete 69 parts car disassembled and stored in my garage. I recently sent the car I was saving it for out for metal work and dug in to sort everything out. There are still parts missing that I know good and well are in the garage somewhere. It's only 26x30 for crying out loud.

On the + side, I took 90% of my books to Goodwill recently and found a C-note stashed in a copy of "Treasure Island". On the - side, I told my wife about it and she ended up with the C-note.

My wife says my filing system sucks Sad part is she is right.