PACKRATS! What are the strangest things you save?

[zanana]

I save empty prescription bottles. I have hundreds of them. I'm still convinced they'll come in handy someday, for storage. (I had to buy one of those plastic storage containers to put them in). I have a bottle from 1985. So, if you call yourself a packrat, beat that!

[onebigbadwulf]

1. my kidney stone.

I win.

[zanana]

4. I have to admit the kidney stone is good...

But I think someone will come up with something even weirder.

[Bertha Venation]

13. Somewhere, I have a titanium screw that was removed from my

ankle. I've graduated to larger bodily metal: I now have a two-inch screw in that ankle. Woo hoo!

[Kamika]

2. My baby teeth

Still have 'em in some box

[jean]

3. bags and boxes

I save way too many. Last week I did cull the collection. I can't believe some of the stuff I save.

on edit: not too strange though, more like boring! Strange would be our dog's ashes.

[LynneSin]

5. My stepfather had a great-uncle who died and seemed to collect bread bags

He had hundreds of them stacked up in a pile. Who knows why - but he did.

[displacedtexan]

6. empty Orangina bottles.I like their shape, OK?

and empty Altoids mint tins.

[slackmaster]

7. I have a metal object fetish

I pick up and save just about every small metal object I see. When I empty the change from my pockets there's often a washer, screw, paper clip, etc. included with the coinage.

[bif]

8. Wine corks

Used to have a couple garbage bags of them, thinking they'd be good for something, someday. Finally, after about 15 years of collecting them. my wife and I decided we'd never find a use for them and chucked them all out.

[slackmaster]

9. You could have made a cool message board out of them

A friend and I tried to use them as media for growing miniature orchid plants but they don't work very well because they are coated with beeswax.

[prolesunited]

10. Belly button lint

I have a whole big bag of it now that I've been saving for most of my adult life. Any suggestions on what to do with it?

[Bertha Venation]

12. I heard of a woman who knits

sweaters for people out of their dogs' fur. You can probably trace her on "Animal Planet."

[northofdenali]

25. Here you go! She doesn't live far from Fairbanks (about

midway to Anchorage)
http://www.novaskayasams.com/HairPages/Alaska%20Range%20Creations/AlaskaRangeCreations.htm

[Bertha Venation]

11. glass jars

I like small glass jars. Jelly jars of odd size (square, octagonal, etc.). Small round jars like the one I recently used of "Better than Boullion." I don't know why I save them. Some I use for change, some I just wash and.... save. I don't know why. I imagine it doesn't please Mrs. V. but I've never asked her about it.

Oh, I also save larger glass jars, but those are for disposal of cooking grease. And I don't save them ALL. I save one when I need it and the rest are recycled.

[ConcernedCanuk]

14. Computers, and parts, including my first , a PS25 20meg - 12MHz !!

.
.
Took me 5 months, taking scrap ones apart, gutting them, figuring out how they work, (no trainig, no manuals) to build myfirst one that would go on-line (486-66dx2)

Boxes of useless hard-drives (20,40,60,100megs and so on)

All the cables (mostly obsolete), modems, net cards, vid cards (got two in this one, running two monitors) bags of memory chips(whadamigonna do with 1 and 2 meg RAM chips?)

and so on

I buy any/all old programs from Dos 3 sumthing, Windows 3.0 and up, the first "Office" b4 it was called Microsoft Office(35 floppies!!}

and when I was renting a 100 acre farm with a barn and a garage,

- I collected EVERYTHING !!!

[FDRrocks]

15. I still have a huge collection of POGS

yup, POGS.

[twistedliberal]

16. Zip-close bags.

I have a drawer full of them. I like to tinker with cars, computers, and pretty much anything else that can be disassembled. So I always think the bags will come in handy for storing and organizing various odd parts from the things I try to salvage.

Strangely, I never use the bags. All of the junk gets thrown into one of my 4 junk drawers, or into the closet (next to the old car radiator I'll never need for anything), or on the busted TV I am currently using as an end table.

[Raven]

17. My friend hoards toilet paper (new, not used!).

She will have 80 rolls at any given time. When she comes to visit me she brings one of those 20 packs...and when she comes back a week or so later she'll bring another!

[alwynsw]

18. My wife's a retired schoolteacher

What doesn't she squirrel away? We have:

toilet paper rolls, newspapers, cardboard boxes, dryer lint, plaster of paris, grosses of pencils, construction paper, bread bags, paper towel rolls, cans of all sizes (this went up in scale since the advent of the Safety Can opener), bricks, rocks (from Barrow to Antarctica), ring binders (a few hundred), and it goes on and on and on and on

We built a 30X60 quonset hut for storage. It's full. We can't get a car into the garage (2.5 car garage). We also have a 2 car detatched garage that's full. I have to blaze a trail in the utility room to change the heater/ac filters.

If I hear,"Don't throw it away, it might come in handy," one more time, well I'll just find a place to put it like I always do,

[Fleshdancer]

19. the most disgusting "pack rat" thing I've ever seen....

I'm not one myself, but in high school, I actually knew a girl who saved the used condoms of "special" encounters with her boyfriend. SICK! She kept them in an envelope tacked to her wall.

It still nauseates me just thinking about it.

[Raven]

20. Ugg! Well, at least she used them!

:eyes:

[geniph]

21. I grew up with packrats, surrounded by crap

so I really fight the tendency now. It's very isolating to be a packrat - people can't reach you through all the garbage piled around you. I try to follow the dictum of: if it's broken, fix it or recycle it or discard it. If it doesn't fit, either make it fit or give it away. If you haven't used it in a year, give it away or sell it or throw it out. If you never liked it in the first place, and you're tired of working around it, get rid of it!

[CBHagman]

23. I think it skps a generation, geniph

My grandfather was very much a packrat, and my father was the type who lived by this maxim: "Don't need it? Throw it out!"

I have to dump a lot of things every time I move, and I also have parted with, either voluntarily or involuntarily, a good many mementos (i.e., childhood pictures and the like) that would actually mean something now. As a result, I have a tendency to cling to things that have some meaning to me.

But the worst thing is newspapers. I'm a recycling fiend and always promise myself I'm going to read that story or clip that article before dumping the Post. Yet the Post piles up until I'm forced to shelp an ungodly number of copies towards the bin. I pray I don't die in this state. The last thing I want is my relatives cursing me with every breath as they clean things out...

[nyrnyr1994]

22. Moist towellettes (unopened)

I have a ton in my glove compartment, gotta love that freaky lemon scent!

[Melsky]

24. beads, weird little pictures, mementos

things I might conceivably someday use in a collage. I'm getting ready for a big move and have to get rid of a lot of it. Probably will sell most of it on ebay.