Of course your a pack rat?! What self respecting automotive enthusiast doesn’t have a pile of spare parts? Never mind that you have parts to cars you don’t own, have never owned, or never will?! I personally have more 455 Olds engines hoarded away than registered cars. Nothing wrong with that!!

I also keep things that “might come in handy” someday. One that always bring a laugh is my tote of power cords and power supplies for old household items. My family laughs at the vast unexplored, untamed collection of interwoven wires, but occasionally they are useful.

Case in point, few weeks ago my oldest stepdaughter needed a fancy scientific calculator for a college class she was taking. The same kind of calculator that we bought for her in high school. Of course, the cord was long gone. No problem, out comes the tote, I made a power cord with leftovers.

My wife has lots of sitting around animatronic figures and villages, some are seasonal, some are holiday themed. Most were battery powered, until the magic tote comes out!!! The money saved on batteries is money that could be spent on more important needs, like more Oldsmobile stuff!

My wife just sent this to me, which is why I’m bringing this up here.


So, what kind of “irreplaceable” crap do others in readerland refuse to part with?

 

I'm really trying to cut down on crap. I'm throwing away boxes things came in new once out of warranty and not important. I'll keep gun boxes, audio equipment boxes, but things like monitors, microwaves, printers, etc. Trying to also get rid of things to cars I don't own anymore. Computer equipment.

I will keep some cables, gun stuff, and old tools like clamps and wrenches.

 

I used to like to buy and sell parts. Now i.m not interested in it any more. Sold my last good parts, and when the guy came to pick them up, I gave him about six boxes of miss parts, glad to get rid of the stuff. What really got me going, is when I moved last year, to much stuff. Also I have a older brother that needs to go to a retirement home. He is a simi horder, and it has been a PITB. He put off getting rid of stuff and now is not able to do by himself. I finally took about 4 truck loads of scrap metal away, and hardly made a dent. We are having a large moving sale this weekend, and after that I told him what is not sold is going by by. I guess what i'm saying, is don't wait till the last moment to get rid of stuff, not easy to do when you get older. I know it is going to tear my brother up to see stuff thrown away, or donated.

 

Oh I have issues. I try and thin out. At one time I had over 10k Hotwheels. They are all but gone. I do have a thing for antique glass bottles and anything else old and cool.

 

This is the kind of thread I'd much rather read!

I'm reluctant to donate stuff when I think I can sell it on the FB's / CL's. I have decided that I need to go thru some totes and get a donation box together, as I have realized that we've got a couple totes worth of Halloween costumes. The wife has a bunch of kitchen "gadgets" that she has decided I can get rid of as well. However, the biggest item on my list is the 64. Really hoping to get it sold this spring / early summer. Oh, and the LT90 Suzuki quad that the boys have outgrown.

The stuff that won't get sold: the Star Wars toys. I had several originals from when I was a kid, and my sons both received plenty of other toys and the collection is quite large now.

 

Four years ago, unbeknownst to me and my siblings, my mother sold all of our 70's & 80's era Star Wars figures in a garages sale for . . . $20!! She said the guy practically skipped back to his car after handing her the cash.

 

My wife is a pack rat. Not quite a hoarder, but getting there. When I was in the Navy I could keep a handle on it. When it was time to transfer to a new command, I always sent her and the kids ahead so that I could pack out the house. I would then conveniently "lose" or just plain throw away a ton of crap.

I got out of the Navy in '99, and we have been living in the same house since then. Now it just keeps, piling up, and up, and up. I've talked her into having a few garage sales over the years, but it doesn't seem to make much of a dent.

 

The photos can help say it all... At least it's neatly stored and accessible... The second level needs a little attention... But my down sizing efforts are working quite well...

 

My brother had a huge collection of Star Wars figures stored in my dads attic. A couple years ago my dad needed to do some work in the attic, which required taking everything out. Imagine his disappointment when he opened the case and found a pile of limbs snd torsos. The heat obviously made the rubber bands or whatever held them together break.

 

When I moved I got rid of all the extra car stuff I had except for the stuff I may need. I couldn't figure out what to do with it, it would be a huge hassle to try to sell it and it was too good to throw away. So I gave it to a buddy to sell. I helped him once at a very muddy swap meet putting away his stuff and realized how much work it is taking stuff to meets, setting up, tearing down, etc. So I gave it to him and asked for 1/3 of whatever he can sell it for back to me. Well then Covid, etc and not much has happened. Well at least the stuff will go back into the hobby and not be wasted...I hope.

 

I'll admit to having a box of wall warts and power supplies, Can't seem to throw them out. To be honest, I rarely go to that box for any need. We try not to keep a bunch of stuff after seeing others having to deal with it.

We were talking about storage centers and how they have popped up all over, through the years. As a society, we didn't use to pay for storing stuff. I can't believe what it costs these days. One of our co workers were paying 200 bucks a month to hold their overflow of stuff. I got the idea to call locally, and found the smallest, cheapest unit was 90 bucks/month. Nope. At some point, that stuff can't be worth the price of storage in the long haul.

 

And so was born the storage locker auctions, people didnt want to pay to keep their own junk lol.

I think many of us share similar traits, i know some of mine were passed down from parents that grew in the depression era, where nothing was thrown away.

even when i eventually part w something i will strip it and salvage any useful part, nuts, bolts, metal rods, *****, chains etc the list goes on.

this past winter my 1971 snowblower stopped moving under its own power, thats unusual because for the last 35 years ive owned its never slowed down. I found the drive chain master link had snapped. I made my way over to my parts blower (picked up on the side of the road free)and removed the chain and link put them onto my good blower and was on my way in about 15 minutes.

i did have two parts blowers but this past summer i stripped one of any parts that i might need or could use in other projects. The carcass i left at the end of my driveway free, it was gone in about an hour.

i used part of the stripped blower along w an SS2 rim and a piece of fence post to make a stand for a polisher.

so yeah between snowmobiles, snowblowers, bikes, cars, motorcycles and just playing in the garage ive got a few spares of things. I keep everything generally organised and out of the weather, i dont like my place looking like a junk yard, but i would love to own a junkyard

 

I will stop and grab anything with a motor when I can. I've picked up some really good 2 stroke gas trimmers that way -- bought one of those carb tool kits from Amazon that has all the different heads. Usually, the trimmer is so far out of adjustment that I have them running like a champ in 30 minutes or less. Also, picked up a roadside self-propelled mower that I thought was locked up. Took the cover off the pull start, and discovered about 35 acorns stuck in the flywheel. Cleaned that all out and started on the 2nd pull.

 

I find my best treasures at the curb, the latest was a real nice Toro lawnmower, almost like new and it was still running. When I got it home I thought how silly, someone actually through a running lawnmower away.

 

OMG !!
Where do I start !!
My wife is a horrible pack rat, she was a school teacher and I believe she still has every teaching aid she ever had dating back 30 years !!
I keep boxes from gun purchases because if I sell the gun people want the orig packaging, I also keep cases after a unit has failed especially soft ones from things like C-pap machines etc.. I always find a use for it ,as a example all my portable power tools have a case because of this practice.
I cant help my self when it comes to vacuum cleaners I see on the curb I will take them home and ck them out, most of them are fully functional once you remove the restriction which is usually pet hair , I clean them up and disinfect them, all three of my daughters are using
curb vacuum cleaners I gave them and all are still going strong , I recently saw a Shark vacuum on the curb and it looked new still had stickers on it , I brought it home and found the usual PET HAIR !! so clogged I couldn't believe it removed it , cleaned the 3 filters and disinfected it I swear that thing will suck the carpet off the floor !! it sucks so hard that it actually gets hard to push !!
If I see carpet cleaning machines etc.. with long cords but don't think the machine is worth saving I cut the cord off , go to Home Cheapo or Ace buy a female end for $2.99 and I have a nice long extension cord ( I have about 5 of them)
I also save a lot of wood scraps, I have made entire projects from cut offs and scrap wood, shorter pieces I use for gussets , handles, feet etc... SOOOO I guess I'm a pack rat too.

 

Sounds familiar...donating one or two things is easy but when you get a pile of stuff together suddenly you can see it's worth more than a case of beer...if you can connect with a buyer(s).

I think my approach is going to have to be lot sales...put a bunch of miscellaneous items together, put them on FB or CL in one ad and give them 2 weeks or so to sell. If I still have them after that time, donate. (Easy to say, now I just have to get there...this stuff is easier to accumulate than it is to divest oneself of!)

 

This gave me a laugh!

 

I am hoping the past 5 years cures me. I moved out of my apartment into my house, but, simultaneously, cleaned out great aunt's house and transported all to grandma's garage, then we sold that house. Meanwhile, I have been tossing trash. That was 2017-early 2019. Since then, I've auctioned off the goodies from grandma's house, thrown away much more trash, both individually, and via a 20 cubic yard dumpster. I have a 10 cubic yarder this weekend for hopefully last of the crap in the basement, then we can sell the joint.

Add to that, every time I go to visit parents, I work on dad's house and try to make one dump run, one goodwill run, and leave another donate pile, and trash pile to be thrown at his convenience. All this makes me try to toss crap whenever I can.

 

its true, it might not be the item you find but the incredulousness you feel when score something that you cant believe someone finds little or no value in it.

my funniest was my spouse wanted a treadmill, while shes pricing out hundreds of dollars of equipment i know shes not going to use for more than a month or two, i mention it to my buddy. He says ill give you my wifes she hasnt used it for anything more than a clothes hangar for at least a year. I told him no, i dont want it, but ill borrow it short term. We laughed and i picked it up, sure enough after a couple months i tried to give it back, but he wouldnt take it, so like so many others ive seen it ended up on the side of the road free. It was gone quick enough, but probably sometime not long after that that poor treadmill repeated its life cycle of use, sit, roadside, repeat.

 

I totally missed Bfg's joke about picking up a running lawnmower from the curb when I read it the first time. That was good, and funnier that I didn't catch it the first time.

I have just started trying the bundle ads. I have bundled some t-ball stuff together, but have not yet sold anything. Time to lower the prices, or maybe even combine the items into just one ad. Hell, my younger son just took and sold his Nintendo DS games at one of those game resale shops and got $195 for 15 games. Saved us the hassle of trying to sell them individually online, although we could have gotten more that way. Pro tip for any gamers, don't go to GameStop to resell games, as they will give you the absolute lowest amount. Try and find a local store that may only have one or two locations, like Media Reload in Flint.

 

I got a bunch of Star Wars novels on facebook marketplace right now with no hits. No one reads anymore.

 

I've lived in an 1896 farm house since 1976. Back before civilization move in it was often handy to keep stuff so you would have to make the trip. Now stores are near by so I got a large construction dumpster and filled it with CRAP

Unfortunately, you can't tell the difference

A few gallons of gas and a match may be the only solution

 

Wow! Cruzn 66 your collection is really organized! Over the years I've collected several project cars. I also collected parts to re-do those project cars. I've also just collected parts... if it was Oldsmobile and the price was right it went home with me. The real downside to my collecting is I'm not organized. For the most part, it will be really tough working on a project car if I keep having to stop and go through a dozen boxes looking for parts I know I have. I've made some progress on this but still have way to much on a shelf here or there in a box somewhere!

 

Thanks... I have a lot more shelving not in the photos which hold all the totes and boxes of spare parts... I invested in steel wire shelving on wheels (see link below)...
I was dealing with several different body styles simultaneously (especially GBody, WBody, EBody, as well as Custom Cruiser and Ciera) and wanted to keep things separate and in their own areas respectively...

https://www.samsclub.com/p/seville-c...=plp_product_1