Skip to content

Why you would want this

Somewhere in your home there is a drawer. You know the one. It holds eleven chargers, four of which belong to devices that left the household years ago, a cable with a plug on each end that you have never seen anywhere else, and the agitator of a frappé maker that stopped mixing two summers ago. Nobody opens the drawer on purpose. Orphan Parts Lens is for the drawer, and for everything like it.

Where it would live

The drawer of chargers. Photograph the label, confirm what it says, and from then on the question "does this fit the laptop" has an answer with its reasons, instead of a shrug and a trial.

The garage shelf. The spare hose, the belt from the previous mower, the box of fasteners. A ruler and a photo turn "about this big" into a number with an uncertainty, and the search for the part that fits is one you run with the right words.

The parents' basement. Three generations of working electronics and one sentence: "it all works, probably." A record per item, condition and tests included, is how the basement empties without anyone being blamed for throwing out the good one.

The office cupboard. Monitors, keyboards, a docking station from a laptop two models back. Honest free-pickup drafts in minutes, with the data-removal steps on the list before anything leaves the building.

The repair shop. A customer's "the charger that came with it" becomes a record with the voltage, the polarity and the barrel size, and the question to the customer is written by the rules from what is still unknown.

The school's tech closet. Twenty laptops that boot fine and a budget of nearly nothing. Build and reuse proposes what the closet already contains, and the build pack is the document the volunteer on Saturday actually needs.

Moving day. The last box is always the one with the cables. Capture it on the phone while it is still on the floor; decide what it is in the new place, with the photos beside the facts.

How life gets better

  • Fewer trips for the wrong part. A candidate gets one verdict from the rules, with the line that decided it. An unknown is never a pass; it is a question you ask the seller before the trip.
  • Honest listings in minutes. The draft is written from confirmed values only, and the disclosures the rules require are on it before you see it. The buyer knows about the loose keycaps because you did.
  • Old devices doing a job again. The laptop with the weak battery and the spare monitor were a homework desk the whole time. Someone had to say so, with a cable on the shopping list.
  • Less clutter, fewer arguments. Every item has a record, an intent and a place. "Where is the thing" becomes a search in the inventory rather than a conversation.
  • Nothing happens behind your back. A scan never publishes. A listing is a draft you approve, posted by you. A search is one you run. Prices come with their sources, and a number without one says so.

Numbers made up, honestly

Statistic Value
Marriages saved per emptied drawer 0.4
HDMI cables per household that have never met a monitor 3.7
Odds that a mystery charger fits anything you still own 1 in 9
Minutes of "where is the thing" avoided per week 23
Kitchen machines in the world waiting on the one part that would fix them 11 million
Working laptops known only as "the old one" 1 per adult
Trips for the part that turned out to be the other one, per repair 1.3
Items given away with the note "works, probably" too many
Drawers opened on purpose, per year 2

Every number in this table is invented for a smile. The app itself never invents a number; that is rather the point.

Try it

How the pieces connect is on How it fits together.