Never Throw Anything Away

Even a leaking airbed has a better use as a cover for a log pile, or if the stronger canvass type as a trailer cover. Managed to get a nice bit of new square section downpipe from a skip on Monday that will become a short ends rack.

My daughter wanted to check the colour of a can of paint.

Could I find anything disposable in my workshop to paint...

I have a hoarder friend who never disposes of anything. He's not one of these people you see on TV with piles of junk filling every room, he just slowly collects mostly good/great stuff but won't ever let anything go. For example he has a Mk1 Capri he built and tuned when he was in his 30's which hasn't seen daylight in the 15 years that I've known him. It's worth a serious bit of wedge now but he'll never sell it.

I work on a '2 year rule'. If I have something that hasn't been used or utilised in the last 2 years, I get rid of it. Some certain things like tools are exempt but otherwise out it goes to make room for more useful stuff.

With the prevalence of eBay I tend to get rid of things I could easily replace; space is at a premium and the space is often more important than the chance I'll need the item. Also the funds buy new junk to fill the gap left by the old junk!

Hi, well I have a job to throw anything away that may be of use. Below are two photos of a self tapping 5/16" x 2" counter sunk screw.

I've had a polythene bag of about 150 of these kicking about my garage for the last 15 years, which were discarded by the company I used to work for then. During my current garage housekeeping programme, I decided that they needed to be stored in a couple of spare empty coffee tins. I have never used one of them until this week, when fixing a MDF panel to a partition in my garage and not having anything else to hand that would self tap through 6mm thick angle iron and be flush on the panel side, they came into their own.

Regards Nick.

More then 40 years ago I scrounged an impeller from a Rover gas turbine. About 20 years ago I threw it away. Now I want it to make a blower for my little Topsy organ. NEVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY

I had a good clear out about a month back, I only kept items that "maybe" needed in the future which would be fairly costly to replace.

Since the clear out I have already had a need for two items which went in the bin, so I had to buy new. The new parts cost me £9.40, when they went in the bin I thought a couple of quid to get new. I think in the future the rule is it only gets chucked if it would cost £1.00 or less to replace.

Edited By Ron Laden on 06/09/2018 08:47:40

Quite right, never throw anything useful away. I have just been fixing a length of roofing felt along the ridge of a potting shed which was in need of repair. The felt has been sitting in my loft for 20 years and I have nearly thrown it out on numerous occasions. It was proper strong felt too, not the cardboard they sell now.

Like the Egyptian Pharaohs I intend to have all my worldly goods buried with me so I can have a decent workshop in the afterlife.

Doug

I would need My own pyramid for the tools.

Even stuff in a pound shop costs more than that when you take into account the shoe leather. Have you seen the price of timber! It's about a quid a foot now.
Those short ends in every builders skip amount to about £20. Ok not much use for most building but when I retire my exercise is going to be cycling around picking up those little bits and I'll put a wood burner in the shed (if the greenies haven't banned them)

But surely if the greenies want us to grow even more trees we'll need more CO2 in the atmosphere.

Far as I can see the never throw anything away syndrome is justified by the inversion of the 80 % : 20 % rule. That is only 20 % of the stuff you keep could ever be used, even under the most optimistic assessment. Question as to which 20% will get used is unanswerable in advance so hafta keep the lot. For creatively serious hoarders, like moi, the rule is probably more like 95 % : 5 % .

Closely related is the effort that we feel might "reasonably" be expended to make use of hoarded treasure. IFor example I need some serious shelving for the loft and have a decent collection of 1" square speed frame off cuts, a box of joints and a new pack of 12 ft lengths. A quick eyeball estimate says that the off cuts should be more than enough for the 125 ft (ish) total length but a fair number of actual lengths available make a poor match to whats needed. So I set up a jig and welded the short ones into longer lengths. Maybe splicing 1" and 2 1/2" long pieces into the middle of one four section piece was going a bit far but the 1/16" excess came off pretty darn fast on the vertical linisher so it worked out fine in the end. Off cut collection down to one 3 ft length and six 2 ft 6 ones with integrated welded on shelf brackets. Result.

Naturally we won't mention the saga of the "too good to use" assessment on block of alloy which caused me to buy an almost identical lump for a job. Which never got done! So now I have two too good to use pieces.

When it comes to values I suspect most of us had our mental assessments pretty much frozen around about the time we got our first proper wage packet. £50 per calendar month for me. Inflation and technological change leading to vastly reduced real world prices make that assessment a poor guide in the modern world.

Clive.