Not just in time

Having been brought up to never throw away anything that might be useful, TPP has accumulated quite a bit of stuff over the years: screws, wire, rope, wood, flotsum, and so on. But it's only useful if you have a good inventory and know where things are. Our telephone quit working, the land line that's still in use, was telling us the line was in use and the problem was not the service. A bit of sleuthing and it was discovered that the problem was a couple of corroded connector terminals, the result of too much communing with house plants, although a telephone on a sunporch is a very pleasant location. Memory suggested that spare telephone cable and even a spare DSL filter were on hand, but the search of the premises found plenty of stuffs, but not the right ones. You can guess the rest. After purchasing a new line, a new terminal, and a new filter, and rewiring the terminal, Everything worked just fine. Later while seeking a bag of grass seed, the missing telepone line spare parts were found exactly as remembered just not the location.  Dang. Doesn't do us any good to save bits and pieces if they can't be retrieved when needed. However both an inventory and a storage system just isn't going to happen. Sigh.