Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Key organization
anielsen | Mar 20 2006
I recently moved and and now inundated with new keys. The place I've rented has two keys each for the front and back doors, as well as a mailbox key. I have a car key and two bicycle lock keys as well as a key for the locker at my gym. I prefer to get rid of keys altogether and just use combination locks, but I don't have control over most of these locks, so it's not an option to switch for most of these. Most of the time, I only need a subset of keys for anything I do; during the week, I only need house (I only use the back door so that also helps), bicycle and locker keys to go to work. Other times, I need the car key, but not the bike keys. I've been thinking about getting a valet key chain like this: As a second question, does anyone have experience "shaving" the large plastic ends that so many keys (especially cars and bicycle locks) have these days? It's nice if the keys just sit together in a small, slim package, but these plastic do-hickeys force the keys to lie in a jumble. I'd really like to know what kind of tang there is and if it can be attached to something else. I don't have to many keys to experiment with that aren't a pain to replace, so I'd like to get some insight before I go down this path. A 10 Comments
POSTED IN:
 update on my keysSubmitted by anielsen on March 27, 2006 - 7:11am.
I decided to go the carabiner route to swapping different sets of keys in and out. It's by far the easiest method, and much more extensible should I need to add more keys than a valet key holder which appears to be limited to a fixed number of key rings. I'm still trying to figure out how the make my key handles smaller. Since I only have a limited number of keys to my bike locks, I didn't want to try and dissect them for fear of ruining them. The local locksmith says the keys are too new (these are the square laser-cut keys that replaced the bic-pen pickable cylindrical locks) and he doesn't have the equipment to duplicate them. I wrote to both Kryptonite and OnGuard to ask if they can make keys without the fat handles, but have yet to get a reply. Going through this process, I discovered a cache of keys that I'd forgotten about in my fireproof box. For the life of me, I don't know what they are for, so I put them in an envelope and put them in my box of stuff to discard in a year if it's not needed. I also found that I have some keys that I don't need all that often, but still come in handy. For example, I have the key to my parent's house, but they live far away and I only visit for holidays, so I put the key in an envelope and filed it away for the next time I make a visit. A » POSTED IN:
|
|
| EXPLORE 43Folders | THE GOOD STUFF |
