Hoarding?

[Greg Guarino]

I completed the "platform" I was working on to replace the water-damaged Ikea "plinths" that hold up some cubbyhole bookshelves in our family room. Looks nice, almost like a built-in. Almost. Maybe when I make a top to join them altogether ...

I carried the "plinths" into the garage to dispose of them. Each is an open rectangle made of four strips of veneered particle board. Each corner was fastened with one of those knock-down fastener gizmos, similar to the one shown here:

kept the fasteners, of course, even though the "cam" part doesn't come out of the hole very easily. Luckily the particle board was easy to snap with a mallet, breaking just at the weak point - where the cams were.

I managed to harvest 13 or 14 sets, throwing out a couple that had corroded from the water exposure. I'm not sure what I'll ever use them for, but I can't bring myself to throw out stuff like that. Depression-era parents may be to blame. The fasteners are now neatly nestled amongst a number of other items I've accumulated over the years.

I have some small gauge nails with over-wide flat heads, in three different finishes: copper, galvanized and bluish-black. They came with the house, the former owners of which were apparently unaware of the invention of the screw. I have yet to find a screw anywhere in the house.

The copper ones are presumably for flashing, and the galvanized for some other roofing need. The others might be plasterboard nails; I'm not sure. (We have walls that are pre-sheetrock and post-lath; consisting of sheetrock-ish panels with a grid of holes to help support the the coarse plaster layer) It would come as a great surprise if I ever have a need for any of those nails, but I've got them, just in case. I have smaller nails in similarly exotic materials as well.

Other house-bonus items include some very thin "pin" style nails with tiny rounded heads. These are less fasteners than they are a test of skill. It would require a better man than me to drive one into anything tougher than styrofoam.

I've also got every extra wall anchor and proprietary screw that ever came in a plastic bag with some bought item. There are a staggering number of slight permutations on screws of basically the same gauge and length. It's as if each manufacturer commissions a screw design for each product. It outs me in mind of the tupperware/glad/ziplok/generic food containers we have; seemingly identical containers all have slightly different threads designed to prevent any other lid from mating.

In addition, I've got the leftovers from every fastener I needed a few of and decided it would be a shame not to buy the box. Same goes for other small items that that come in bags. EMT connectors, copper pipe fittings, etc.

My Dad had glass jars. Jars and jars and jars of every fastener that ever crossed his path. I believe they are still in my parents' garage. Steel-cut nails, corrugated fasteners, mismatched machine screws and bolts, you name it. In the main they weren't terribly well organized though, so I'm ahead on that score.

[Swingman]

A gallon pickle jar here ... anything dropped on the floor and not found, but swept up later, mismatched, without a mate, or just plain unknown, from fasteners to small hinges and hardware, goes into this "Golden Bucket of Crap".

Amazing how often you can find just what the one thing you need in that jar ...

[Artemus]

Not hoarding. You're just being judicious. I save all kinds of hardware and it has saved my ass many times when I'm repairing something and need a piece that isn't available anymore for love nor money. Art

[Mike M]

Your not alone, wait till you get to where you know you have something but can't find it and end up buying more so you will find it. When I got her my electrical construction truck was ready to be retired so they gave it to me and never unloaded it. I still have thousands of feet of wire, about 300' pipe, down to only 40' of strut. There is a

4 drawer 4' deep weather guard box fool of 1/2- 1" fittings. Boxes of caddy clips ect. Truck still runs great. Also have 1/2" thru 1 1/4" emt benders, several rigid hickeys. I just can't seem to part with anything I might need.

Mike M

[dadiOH]

Sounds familiar. I have a Corsicana Texas fruitcake tin filled with sundry stuff like that. Been carting it around for close to 50 years, always look there first when i need somethiong, often find it.

[Puckdropper]

Greg Guarino wrote in news:k7ecii$6jf$1@dont- email.me:

*snip*

Don't think about driving those nails, tap them into place. I've got a flat-head screwdriver with a small notch cut in the end to hold a railroad spike in place while I tap the end with a hammer. I usually set the nail in first with pliers (sometimes I push it in with the pliers, other times I hold it to tap with the hammer.)

*snip*

Puckdropper

[Mike M]

her should have been hurt. But her is coming home tonight.

[Father Haskell]

GOOD thing in this case.

[Bill]

As a youngster, my dad showed me how you dumped the jar out on the driveway--not completely, just enough, to sift through and find the screw and/or washer you needed. Evidentally, the right one was always supposed to be in one of those jars. 1960's technology.

[EXT]

I am a nut & bolt & screw hoarder, along with wood. Wood that has no further potential for use becomes kindling in the wood stove.

Equipment that has failed, or quit working will be stripped down to remove screws, bolts, usable parts, and the metal will be given to my neighbor for scrap metal, plastic parts go into the recycling bin - I often wonder what the sorters at the recycling depot think when they find odd shaped and colored plastic parts on their conveyor. Even if they toss them into the garbage, it saves me doing it as we have limit on the number of bags every other week.

[Sonny]

Solution: Paint, with all the different paints you've been hoarding, also, all those odd & end items, string them together, then decorate your shop for the holidays.

Sonny

[tiredofspam]

That's me too. I strip it all for parts. I stopped using buckets for screws and stuff. I bought a whole bunch of HF plastic divider boxes. I can find what I need in a minute now. Excessive excess is thrown in appropriate recycle bins. The large ones I will be building a rack for sometime soon. The small ones go in my old library card catalog to keep small things nicely separated.

[tiredofspam]

Of course they are. They are not machined.

[Larry W]

opposite sides of a piece of plywood, with a handle on top and some feet at the bottom to keep it upright. I have a couple set up like that and a few on the walls here and there too. On sale sometimes for $5.00 or so.

I must admit the several dozen baby food jars filled with hardware do generate a certain amount of pleasurable nostalgia...

[WW]

I am a nut & bolt & screw hoarder, along with wood. Wood that has no further potential for use becomes kindling in the wood stove.

Equipment that has failed, or quit working will be stripped down to remove screws, bolts, usable parts, and the metal will be given to my neighbor for scrap metal, plastic parts go into the recycling bin - I often wonder what the sorters at the recycling depot think when they find odd shaped and colored plastic parts on their conveyor. Even if they toss them into the garbage, it saves me doing it as we have limit on the number of bags every

I am a bigger hoarder than most of you. A youngster during the depression my dad had such a low paying job he repaired everything that broke. Was a master of ALL trades. I learned a lot as a helper on things. I have some stuff we had at that time. Even NEW square nails. ( why do I keep them ??)/. So I have so much stuff in my shop that usually I find what I need for what ever. Through the years I learned electronics. Fixed radios and television (tube type only) did all my auto and motorcycle repairs and appliances. Built a cabin. Major remodeling on every house I owned. Thanks to my Dad that was such a good teacher. Right now am building a custom computer desk for my wife. She is disabled. Had enough scrap hard wood to build it. Oak and mahogany. Oh about the good old days>>>My first house (new) was $7500.00. WW other week.

[Steve Turner]

Same here. I never throw away any contraption that has fasteners or parts that I think might be of some use in the future. But I've gotten away from just throwing that kind of stuff into a big jar or can. So many times I've grown utterly weary of slogging through the same unsorted containers that I periodically force myself to sort every last nut, screw, and washer into parts cabinet drawers that are labeled so I can go straight to the one I need.

[Greg Guarino]

So, does anyone here still have jar lids affixed to the *bottom* of a shelf? That was a popular system among the handier Dads in the neighborhood when I was a lad. Screw the lids into the bottom of a shelf, fill the jars with finish nails, knobs, drill bits etc., turn the jars into the mounted lids. And voila! A veritable museum of glass-enclosed hardware specimens. No need to even label them, and you can't lose the lids.

Of course, glass has its drawbacks in a shop. When you smashed a jar on the floor, you'd use the big magnet your Dad kept for just that purpose to separate the hardware from the shards of glass. In fact, my Dad would have me run the magnet through the pile of sawdust after he swept up, as not to lose any precious hardware.

[Greg Guarino]

Maybe, but in addition to being extremely thin (I'll bet they'd be loose in a 1/16" hole), they're pretty long, maybe 1.25".

But, have I thrown them out? Of course not.

[Greg Guarino]

I actually spent a good forty minutes recently sorting what was still random and putting it into a plastic tray. I should never need to buy a small screw again.

[Greg Guarino]

We dumped a jar out on the bench, or on the "utility" piece of ply my Dad used on sawhorses as a spare surface. It was usually my job to pick out the right item. Problem was, there was most often only one when two were needed, or two when four were needed, or (most annoyingly) 7 when 8 were needed.