Hit 500 unique CSS grid layouts in my personal library last night

I was just cleaning up old project files around midnight and decided to count them all. Turned out I had 512 different grid layouts I'd saved from the last 4 years of tinkering. That number surprised me because I remember starting out with maybe 10 basic templates back in 2020. Most of them are just experiments with auto-fill and minmax that I never even used on a real site. Has anyone else accidentally built up a huge stash of grid patterns they haven't touched in years?

2 comments

2 Comments

pipergonzalez8d ago

512 different grids is an impressive pile of experiments. Did you actually document any of them with notes on why a certain pattern worked or failed, or is it just a raw folder full of CSS files? I always mean to organize my stuff but end up just dumping new patterns in and forgetting about the old ones.

the_aaron8d ago

Don't you just hate when you finally clean up a folder and realize you can't remember which experiment proved what? Yeah, I've been there. What helped me was keeping a plain text file right inside each project folder, just a few lines about what I changed and what happened. Like "stuck with 8-column grid, text wraps weird on mobile below 600px" or "tried 12-column with 20px gutters, looked way too tight on tablet." It doesn't have to be fancy, just enough so future you doesn't have to guess. I also name my CSS files something obvious like "grid_v3_8col_TESTED_mobile_ok.css" so I can spot the working ones without opening them.