Spring is Here - Let's Start Tidying!

One of the most difficult aspects of the Freezer Challenge involves samples.  All those samples.  Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of samples shoved in the back of refrigerators and freezers.   Whose initials are those?  No idea.  Does that say 1997 on the box?  Ummm...

Inventorying samples can be tough - especially when the samples you're trying to inventory belong to people who have long since left the lab - and it can be tedious work.   Even when it means extra points on the Freezer Challenge, it can be tempting to skip the inventory questions altogether.   So why bother?  Here are a few of our favorite reasons to put on some tunes and settle in for a few days of sample inventorying:

• You never know what you might find.  Really.  Don't believe us?  Check out this article about the vials of Smallpox Virus found at the NIH. 
  
• You never know what you might find, part II.  Of course you've read through all of the notebooks from your previous labmates, but maybe they weren't as good about keeping up their notebooks as you are. Perhaps an old sample will spark a new discovery...
  
• Creating an inventory now will make it much easier to go back and find the samples you need to create the figure Reviewer #2 really has to see for your paper to be published.  We both know that figure isn't necessary, but Reviewer #2 was asleep the day they taught logic.
  
• If you discard old samples as you create the inventory your freezer will likely be less cluttered.  This is a good thing for so many reasons, including not needing to stand in front of a cold box for any longer than is absolutely necessary.  Also discarding old samples gives you extra points on the Freezer Challenge!
  
• Cold storage requires a lot of resources.  Whether those resources be valuable space in the lab or energy consumption that can be measured in terms of homes, the fewer cold storage units you need to store samples, the better for all of us.
  

Happy tidying!  And don't forget to share pics of your oldest samples on #FreezerChallenge2017!