Some might call it hoarding

[Scout]

Do you hesitate to throw out a screw, nut, or bolt; an odd piece of wood; any tool or book; a holey t-shirt or used-up towel? Do you always think, "Well, one day I might need one of these" and hang onto it? Or do you part willingly with anything you don't currently have a use for?

[Nik]

I guess I'm more on the hoarding side...
Don't keep holey t-shirts, socks or used up towels, but wouldn't easily part from a screw, a book and especially - not with an odd piece of wood, which I hope to burn in the fireplace during winters.
Also, I'm probably a freak of recycling and try to dispose of stuff at dedicated places for further recycling. I suspect this can be the case, but I'd be rather disappointed if garbage trucks bring all this separated waste to the same place

[J.J.]

Scout wrote: "Do you hesitate to throw out a screw, nut, or bolt; an odd piece of wood; any tool or book; a holey t-shirt or used-up towel? Do you always think, "Well, one day I might need one of these" and hang..."

My brother and I were just talking about this. Yes, I do this, and eventually I find a use for everything I "Hoard." He says the same thing, that when you throw something out, that's when you find the use for it...

Then again, I'm not quite as bad as people who end up on shows about this, so...

[Scout]

I got it from my dad. He hardly ever has to go to the hardware store for anything. And I know what you mean, J.J. Throw something out, and a couple of weeks later, you wish you hadn't. It's not like hoarding magazines and newspapers and useless crap. If you do things around the house and the yard, it's nice to have that stuff you've saved from other jobs. Only do-it-yourselfers know what that's about.

[Ian]

I know what Scout means. My father had a whole lot of stuff that he accumulated, and I took a lot of it home when he died. I made myself a hand-pushed lawn mower from a collections of lawn-mower parts. It is a bit odd, since the parts came from different makes, and they don't quite fit together exactly, but it cuts grass. However I have noticed one oddity. From various purchases for doing things, my garage had quite a bit of left-over wood, but when I had to do a couple of house repairs earlier this year, I went and bought some more good stuff.

I carried that over to my lab. Once I constructed a device for long-term exposure of fabrics to UV radiation. Obviously I had to buy the radiation tubes, and got metal reflectors fabricated, and I got an electrician to wire the thing. But the whole structural frame holding it together so the could be opened and closed (about 1.5 meters high) and held in place I made from timber I recovered by dismantling a couple of pallets. Those who saw it tended to scratch their heads or laugh because it looked as rough as guts (not for me those earlier guys who made equipment as works of art) but it did the job, and amusingly enough, when I had finally finished with it and was wondering what to do with it, guys from the local University wanted to borrow it. I let them have it.

[J.J.]

Scout wrote: "It's not like hoarding magazines and newspapers and useless crap..."

Junk mail makes for great firestarters instead of buying lighter fluid...I let mine pile up through the winter until it's warm enough in the spring to bring the grill out...

[Scout]

Right. When I had a fireplace, I kept stacks of newspapers, and I still keep some paper bags to start fires for the grill. I've tried and failed to post a photo of an old riding mower I called Frankenstein because my dad made it with cannibalized parts from several mowers. Recycling before it was a thing. I miss that old mower.

[Marie]

Cool subject Scout! :)

Hoarding is definitely in my family! lol My dad had all kinds of stuff from different sizes of lumber to all kinds of screws and bolts. I too have taken up this tradition! :) I have all kinds of stuff too and I say the same thing "I might need this one day so I will just keep it". I still have my dad's screws and bolts in a small tub along with all different sizes of nails!

I also have clothes that I cannot part with and if they have small holes in them I just wear them out in the yard or some such! I won't wear them to the grocery store (people might talk - lol). :)

[Scout]

My shop in the back yard is where I put stuff I might need. My son recently moved into a bigger house and needed the mattress and box springs I stored there. Also the old microwave and rotisserie and ancient trunk from my granddad. So good thing I kept them. I also keep old boards, one of which I recently used. Also a sleeping bag and a set of carving tools and a pup tent.

Here's a question: Have you ever thrown something away and then, a few weeks or months later, wished you had it back?

[Ian]

"Have you ever thrown something away and then, a few weeks or months later, wished you had it back? "

Unfortunately, yes, - sometimes soon after someone has accused me of being a packrat 😞

[Lizzie]

I would keep more than I do, if I had a place for it. Screws, nuts, and bols, etc., I end up buying more because I don't know where I put the one I need NOW. I bought the same espresso maker that I had for 12 years. The pump died in it. I kept all the rest of the pieces in case my new version has something break (the water reservoir, frothing arm, portafilter, tamping tool, and drip tray). My son just shook his head as I packed up those pieces. My kids got upset with me because for a long time I refused to let go of the old TV and VHS players. I have the prior 3 cell phones in a desk drawer - all of which work but which can't handle the current updates on apps.

My garage barely fits my Miata. I have two storage areas in the house. The problem with Arizona is we don't have attics or basements, so it's really difficult to find a place to keep things. Storage sheds are expensive and anything that can't handle the high temps in the summer would be ruined. So I don't keep as much stuff as I would be inclined to, because of lack of a place to put it.

[Ian]

I confess to "keeping stuff in case you need it", but like Lizzie, only too often when I need it I can't find exactly the right thing so off I go to the hardware store and buy another. As for eletronics, I have a range of Apple computers from about 1986 - they still work and in principle I could cascade any of those old files up to my current one - but I never have the time to do it. I could recycle them now - but again, I am too busy. When I die, my children will have a job cleaning up the house, but I suppose they should have to do something for getting a reasonably expensive property for nothing.

[Scout]

Yesterday, I decided I had no use for a long-handled gourd, so I took it down the street to my neighbor who is a worse pack rat than I. And today, I found a use for the gourd I'd given away. I could have used it to dip ashes out of my burning barrel. Drats!! :-)

[Lizzie]

Ian wrote: "When I die, my children will have a job cleaning up the house, but I suppose they should have to do something for getting a reasonably expensive property for nothing."

Mine isn't reasonably expensive, but I came to the same conclusion. They can throw it out or do whatever when I am dead. I went through that with my mother passing away almost 2 years ago. She wasn't a complete packrat but she had enough Christmas paper, holiday cards, bows, ribbons, stickers, and such to keep me in stock for the next 10 years. She also had multiple TVs, still in the boxes, clothes with the tags still on, 10 tubes of aspercreme and similar health products. She worked in retail and didn't want to pass up deals on things she might need or could use as gifts.

But, the thing that really got to us were the documents. She has taxes, cancelled checks, and every receipt for the past 30 years. That did cause me to come home, buy a shredder and get rid of everything that was more than 7 years old. I admit, I still had tax returns from the 90s.

[Ian]

When my parents died, cleaning out the house was tolerably easy, if somewhat painful, but dad's garage was awful. He used to gather up old stuff, fix it, and sell it, and he kept parts for everything. I took about five trailer loads to the tip, and kept one trailer load. As an example, I built myself a hand lawn-mower out of the various bits and pieces lying around. It works, but it is a little odd in that thanks to different manufacturers having different standards, the bits I saved, while they seemed right at the time, had slight variations. It is an odd mower, but it cuts grass.

[Graeme]

Ian wrote: "When my parents died, cleaning out the house was tolerably easy, if somewhat painful, but dad's garage was awful. He used to gather up old stuff, fix it, and sell it, and he kept parts for everythi..."

Sad as it is ... I immediately imagined you building a time machine from the parts you found in your father's garage... (perhaps some almost finished plans were hidden away there...)

[Ian]

No, it wasn't sad. Dad had all this stuff, but fixing things kept him alive, and it was a nice income earner for him.

[Scout]

My dad has a bunker with every tool and screw and bolt imaginable. Ammunition reloading equipment, carpentry and plumbing and electrical tools and parts. Like me, he's kept everything. What's going to become of all that? It will be up to me to decide, and it's too much to imagine how to deal with it. Overwhelming, really, to think about. I'm sure there are all the parts to assemble a time machine, if I just knew how :-)