I hate to throw out any thing cause I might need it.

Believe it or not I have had this piece of 1 3/4" round stock for 39 years and finally used it today to make a spacer. How do I know I had it 39 years? I graduated in 1974, in my Junior or Senior year in high school I was making guns in shop class (try that today), if you look close you can see where I started to file the dovetail in it to hold the tang which holds the barrel to the stock. This just justifies my compulsion to keep things in case I need it for something. Is anyone else this bad of a hoarder?

 

My problem is, I tend to either give things away, or throw them out..........then down the road, I need them! But, I only have so much room. Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

my dad used to say, save it for 7 years, if you don't use it after 7 years, save it for 7 more needless to say he didn't throw out anything!

 

One man's junk is another man's treasure and when I die my wife and kids will throw away my treasure and wonder why I kept all that junk.

 

I have a one year rule if I don't use it in a year out it goes!!

 

You are not alone.. I also do the same. I have about 4 five gallon buckets full of little pieces like that. Hey, your gonna need that stuff one day.

 

I can certainly relate! I keep everything. Spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was young and they went through the depression so my grandmother reused aluminum foil, sandwich bags...everything was washed and used till it fell apart. I learned to keep everything. My only problem, when I need it, I know I have it but can never find it until I buy a new one and then it magically appears!

 

I can relate to that, there are parts around here from my Riley 4Port dirt car that I finished in 1975, and my first T I bought back in 1966. It is good to have stories to go with all the parts. My '30 Roadster is a collection of parts stories and old friends. Bob

 

As soon as you throw it away or give it away, the very next day you'll need it.

 

I'm pretty good about parting with parts I haven't a use for but when it comes to materials I'm a hoarder. Nothing worse than getting a boner to make something and not having the iron. I'll cut up lawn furniture for the tubing, bed frames, you name it.

 

When my son was little, I had a milk crate under the vise table that had a small collection of scraps in it... one day I needed to make something, reached in there and pulled out a hunk of metal and made whatever it was I needed. He looked in awe, and when I was done he said "So THAT'S why you keep all that stuff!!"

Now, years later, my milk crate is shelf in the shop, and we were working on his '76 Dodge D100 4x4... pulled the 400 out, gave it a gasket and paint job, Edelbrock intake and carb spacer to run the factory 2bbl and linkage... and the metal rod for the choke mechanism was now one inch too short.
Walked over to the shelf and pulled a piece of rod I'd salvaged from an old computer printer... It was a wire/rod pull-out paper tray, basically a U-shaped piece with 90-degree bends at each end that stopped you from sliding the whole thing out of the printer body.
I cut off a length for the new choke rod and fabricated a replacement, even using the wire's "factory" 90-degree end to make a piece that looks like it was like it came from the factory that way.

Sometimes being a bit of a hoarder really is handy!

-Brad

 

You're going to forget you used it, and in a couple years, you'll be tearing your hair out trying to find it.

Blue

 

I threw out my last three wives...I still don't need them.

 

I've got buckets ,boxes,cool whip containers, old hubcaps, all full of old bolts,nuts, & washers,it seems they are everywhere---but I still go buy new stuff when i need something,& I allways get too much and it ends up in a box only to be passed over next time-----go figure???!!!!!

 

Guess I'm the same way. That's why I've got a lot of storage space. I just can't bear to throw out something that I might be able to use...someday, somehow. It's a sickness.

 

It's getting worse though, as I am sitting at the computer my wife asks me if she can throw out this T-shirt yet, it is full of holes, I thought for a moment and then said no, it's still a good garage shirt to hog up. I am starting to get a little worried though, lately I don't want to throw anything out. I guess I'm not a hoarder though because I will sell anything I have.

 

So now I know my destiny...

 

I go 10 yrs, then blow out sale

 

I got crap I've had for 35 years plus. Every once in a while I find a good use for something and tell myself that's why I keep all that crap.

 

I'm the same way, can't even throw out tooth picks after one use, might be useful for something else. A while back I decided to break out of my habits and at least haul off the just plain scrap I had laying around, so I sorted the different metals, brass, copper, and aluminum and hauled them to the scrap buyer. got about $500 for it all so I loaded up my dump trailer with 4,000 plus pounds of crap from behind my shop. There were cans of used deck screws, bolts, nuts, bent nails, totally useless engine blocks broken vices, and bent fenders. Some of my friends came over and started pulling things out of the trailer that they might need and I thought, poor guys just cant let it go. One of them even rode with me to the scrap yard so he could see what was ar the bottom of the pile.

it didn't hurt that bad to let the stuff go and now I have room for more stuff.

 

No.....

 

I have a drawer full of odd ball stuff. I know that it is odd ball because anything that was common got used up long ago. It's kinda like a sorting drawer.

 

It's not that I need all that junk, I only need a few items but I don't know which items I need yet or when.

 

better to have stuff you don't need, than need stuff you don't have.

 

Last summer bought I some stuff from an estate sale. There was a Stromberg "Areo Type" carburetor from an old Buick among the treasures.
I had never seen one before. A fellow I know casually mentioned it would fit his vintage Buick, so I gave it to him. Dumb move. He did not offer to pay anything and I did not ask anyway. A few months later I bought a vintage Chrysler Industrial hemi with the exact carb on it. It needs a kit
which runs $76.00! The one I gave away appeared to be rebuilt and was all lubed up and looking good. Oh well!

 

This thread is very timely. I just cleaned out my garage and loaded a full truck bed+ another 1/4 bed to scrap. The garage while more organized is certainly not gleaming clean. I had stuff from cars and parts of 20 years ago. It was a fun trip down memory lane. But my kid was helping me throw stuff away, and watching him confirmed I have too much Crap. Well maybe not, hey I might need that in 20 years. Better not get hasty and thrown anything else away. A clean garage is over rated anyways.


Tim

 

in 1965 I bought a Nash Metropolitan to fix up and sell and had a heater hose connector left over. Its the type that you insert in the radiator hose. I used it last year when I added a hot water heater to my A

 

I've had several customers of mine tell me "an organized and clean shop is a sign of a sick mind', or something like that. Funny!!

I throw almost nothing away, saves me lots of trips to the hardware and parts store, like yesterday and today!

 

I had a big clean-up and as I pulled things out and figured out wether I would ever use them again, they ALL ended up back in the workshop again. Saved me a drive to the scrap yard I suppose. If you DONT keep stuff, that's how your car ends up costing you $50,000 to build.!

 

All this time I thought your ID had something to do with a 3 window '32 Coupe. Bob