What to do? Amassed collection of bits and bobs....

[items4sale]

Picture the scene:

There are 7 raaco small component storage racks in the garage like these:

They have been filled slowly over 30 years with the thought of ?that will be useful one day? or ?its useful to have spares?

Now much of this has lain unused and rarely used in anger.

Trouble is it?s a lot of hassle to itemise everything for sale Via say eBay or gumtree with the associated packaging, postage and posting it given the small value or low quantity so I am torn between keeping or binning...

Examples include 1a, 2A, 3A, 5A, 7A, 10a and 13a plug fuses

The entire range of values for car blade type fuses in a coloured plastic case, which are still used on today?s cars

A selection of car bulbs

Assorted screws of various types, lengths and diameters

Ditto for nails

A selection of fixings commonly found in self assembly furniture like wood dowels, screw and cams.

Phono plus and sockets

LEDs of various colours

Etc etc....

So what?s your criteria for keeping or binning?

[tabbypurr]

that all?

What's the chance of it being useful to you in the years ahead? What does it cost you to keep it, and benefit you to lose it? If you will need one, what could you buy another for?

There are basically 3 levels of sales:

1. individual parts or small retail packs
2. colllections of one type of thing, eg fuses or bulbs etc
3. Mixed pallets of all sorts

You can sell at any of those levels, with 3 and often 2 the buyer resells some or all, and you get a way lower price per item. But it's no more work than photographing, boxing & listing.

Some things are worth running through a dishwasher first.

NT

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

if you bin it you will need it the following week .....

[T i m]

<snip>

That you rarely *bin* anything. It's taken energy, effort and materials to come into being and someone somewhere would make good use of it.

For the things of nominal value ...

... anything car related might be appreciated by a small / local garage. Household fuses in a new zip-top / freezer bag would probably sell in a charity shop or would go on Freecycle.

Too much stuff get's thrown away already. ;-(

Once it's yours I believe you have a duty of care (to the world) to make sure that as little stuff as possible get's thrown away, wherever 'away' actually is.

Cheers, T i m

[Davey]

Absolutely. Throw away nothing is my plan, unless it is something that was used to clean something and has no future purpose.

[Bob Eager]

The weirdest one I had was a load of unused eye dressings (only a few months after purchase). I just bought too many.

The local St John Ambulance were very grateful.

[T i m]

<snip>

The number of Dyson uprights you see at the dump that could be working all for trimming the power lead back 100mm. Or the large TV's that are thrown in the electrics skip when they could be fixed for the cost of a capacitor.

People have just too much money and no skill (often born out of necessity) these days.

I have even found (basically clean / undamaged) micro fiber cloths in the road, carefully got them home and put them in the washing machine, to use them for all sorts of cleaning / rag jobs. ;-)

Clean / old T shirts and pants become 'workshop rags'. Any unwanted clothes still in good condition go to the charity shop (for our daughter, that's often where they came from in the first place, of from other family members / friends). ;-)

Anything broken beyond repair (like an inject printer) gets taken to bits, steel shafts / rollers go in my various lathe turning stock bins and the plastics / PCB's get recycled appropriately. I bought it, I should be responsible for making it's disposal / recycling as small a burden on everyone else as possible.

A mate was about to 'throw away' (and by that I mean actually 'put it in the Euro-bin where he has a pert time job', not in the WEEE cage at the local recycling centre) a new / unused Sky box. I manage to get it before he did, stripped it down into it's key parts and the (2014)

500GB SATA drive that came out of it is current my new W10 drive. ;-)

He thought it was 'funny' to send me a picture of his old (W7) PC sticking out of said bin and I've not really spoken to him since.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

<snip>

Bingo. But you had to put a little effort into doing 'the good thing' (all round) but you still did. ;-)

So many people seem to put so little value on anything these days, once they have no use for it and certainly rarely the effort to give something to a good home.

A mate did similar to you with loads of syringes then later, needles to go with ... at a veterinary training college (left over surplus / now out-of-date stuff from his sick Mrs).

I've just 3D printed 50 'NHS spec' visor frames and daughter has punched, shaped, sterilised and bagged up the visors to go with in a batch of 40 and 10 for the local Isabel Hospice and doctors surgery. I had to repair the printer twice in all that (the first repairs in a long time and since building it) and that reminded me of the benefits of having something that was built from (mostly stock) components.

The liner in the extruder nozzle seems to have given up and was causing the extruder stepper some difficulty and made removing the filament cleanly at the end nearly impossible. 'Luckily', when I had made the modified extruder shaft I made two (I wanted them longer to increase the temperature differential between nozzle and extruder stepper) so had one ready to go, complete with liner, allowing me to get back printing and to clean / re-line the old one at my leisure (or when I'm back on the lathe). ;-)

I'm not sure seeing most 'broken' things as repairable is a good thing or not (and knowing they would only be economically repairable *today* is doing so yourself) but that's now I am and have always been?

Cheers, T i m

[tabbypurr]

nah, needs at least 101mm trimming off. Cue long discussion.

Sheeple have been trained to believe picking things up is somehow disgusting or awful, and that they must pay businesses rather than have things for free or a small fraction of the cost. I've had so many diy supplies from people for whom, once they've done a job, the remaining supplies suddenly seem to become in some way unacceptable or worthless. It's the same stuff it was 5 days ago!

I'm keeping a safe distance from that one

only worth a fiver, but if you got it out in 5 minutes that's £60 an hour.

Sheeple have been trained. It's stupid. I get better quality, longer lasting & more reliable goods by buying used than buying new. Only sheeple are responsible for their choices, not someone else.

NT

[michael adams]

Yeah Man don't follow the Sheeple. Smell the coffee, do the math, and get with the program !

michael adams

...

[T i m]

<snip>

Except those in the know. 'Where's there's muck there's brass'. (well, sometimes anyway). ;-)

Yup, the worst being contract builders. I've seen several brand new sheets of plasterboard and bundles of constructional timber thrown in a skip and it seems such a waste. To them it's a liability of course, having to pay to store it or even return it for refund versus just chucking it away.

;-)

Quite. And sometimes our existence here is about more than money.

Like I said, this doesn't generally happen in 3rd world countries because they simply can't afford to throw anything useable (or that could be made useable) away.

It amazes me how skillful and imaginative some of these people can be, fixing machine made stuff with their bare hand (and often bare feet) and in less that ideal circumstances. They appreciate that (say) a burnt out industrial motor is only broken because of some thin copper wire. All the work and energy that went into making the casing, the end plates, the armature and end plates can be salvages, giving them something back that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford.

Cheers, T i m

[Vir Campestris]

Keep if it might be useful.

Though when we moved house it went to "chuck unless it's going to be useful before we move".

Several things I threw out I've needed since the move :(

Now we have a log burner no wood gets thrown away, however small. Little bits make good kindling, and middle sized bits make little bits.

I did recently send some "kettle" (IEC) leads to the recycling. I have far more spares than I'll ever need.

Andy

[harry]

Get rid of the lot..............Car boot sale. Keep the fuses and spare bulbs.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

Ham radio rallies are one place assorted items 50p a bag are sold off. You could also do the same at a car boot. At least it can be satisfying to know that somebody might be able to make use of them. Nuts and bolts of assorted types are very useful to have too.

I remember there used to be small adds in the back of magazines for bundles of stuff like this be it assorted transistors, leds or whatever. Brian

[fred]

The trouble with ' keeping it as it may prove useful someday ' is that when that day comes you can never find it