ESD Noob-- What do you do about it?

[CynicalMan]

Pretty much any modern appliance that has a metal chassis and a 3-prong plug will be grounded. So, yes you should be able to clip it to the chassis as long as it has a 3-prong plug. If you replace the alligator plug with a banana plug you can plug directly into the the ground plug on an AC outlet (the circular one).

Seriously though, you shouldn't need a wristband. Take a look at the posts above.

[waltk]

When we had our first baby a few years back, everything had to be sterile before it came anywhere near the baby.  If we dropped a nuk on the floor, it had to boiled before it could go back in the baby's mouth.  Fast forward a couple years - and add some parenting experience.  For the second baby, the ten-second rule applies - if it hasn't been on the floor for more than 10 seconds, blow the dust off and stick it in the kid's mouth.

Same thing with ESD protection.  Relax.  My work area is also a basement with a concrete floor, and I've never had a single component destroyed or degraded.  I never get a static discharge when touching anything.  When I build things, I just grab components out of my plastic storage bins, and they always work fine.  So spare yourself the grief and fussiness of using a wrist strap, and skip it.  If you have OCD tendencies, focus them on your soldering technique, and wiring layout instead.

[Gyrofist]

When we had our first baby a few years back, everything had to be sterile before it came anywhere near the baby.  If we dropped a nuk on the floor, it had to boiled before it could go back in the baby's mouth.  Fast forward a couple years - and add some parenting experience.  For the second baby, the ten-second rule applies - if it hasn't been on the floor for more than 10 seconds, blow the dust off and stick it in the kid's mouth.

Same thing with ESD protection.  Relax.  My work area is also a basement with a concrete floor, and I've never had a single component destroyed or degraded.  I never get a static discharge when touching anything.  When I build things, I just grab components out of my plastic storage bins, and they always work fine.  So spare yourself the grief and fussiness of using a wrist strap, and skip it.  If you have OCD tendencies, focus them on your soldering technique, and wiring layout instead.

Haha, okay, I'll take that advice. Dang cord for the wriststrap's only like 2' long anyways, would just get in the way.

[amptramp]

Just to clarify something for the OP, the black foam is resistive and will discharge anything plugged into it.  The pink foam does not generate any tribological charge on its own, but it does not discharge anything.

As mentioned by greaser_au, components do not necessarily fail immediately - they may degrade and cause no problems for a while but fail later.  Breathe on the stuff to keep the humidity up.