Pluggers by Rick McKee for May 09, 2024

Or floppy disks..

Pluggers is never waste anytheengs.

Life’s too short.

True.

I have to admit. . .I don’t know ANYONE who does this.

My father saved miscellaneous extra screws, bolts, nuts, and washers. He sorted them by size and stored them in wall drawers like at a hardware store. He did that for over 60 years, and seldom needed to buy anything for simple home repair projects. However, he didn’t label the drawers. It drove me nuts that he knew where everything was, whereas I would get frustrated looking for something.

I have a large variety of different sizes and types of nails, screws, washers, nuts, etc. I keep them on a shelf in the basement, and nearly all are in the packages they came in, so at least I have an idea of what sizes I have. For things like that, my philosophy is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Besides, if you wait to buy that stuff only when you actually need it, you’ll be stunned by how much their cost has increased.

Today we are a throw away society. Not that long ago we would save things for a second use … and we would repair things ;-)

My late father-in-law saved dead light bulbs. No one ever knew why.

Oh please. I’m not that bad.

I straighten them when I need that size.

Okay, maybe not that bad, but it’s in the ballpark.

My father used to keep bent nails. One of my chores was to help straighten them out.

I have a drawer full of mixed hardware, but even I won’t save bent nails.

Drill bits to resharpen.

I remember straightening nails when I was a kid ……. used a lot of them building my tree house ……… but I think that I still have a can or two of them that I brought home from my Parents home when I cleaned it out …… ;)

Not even if I were on a desert island.

Mine are all in topless plastic boxes that came out of one of those cabinets with rows of tiny drawers you pull out until you give up trying to find the ones you want and go buy some. The screws are arranged from small to large, phillips along the left side of the left hand drawer of an old desk, others along the right side, with a space in the middle for the drill bits. Nails are in the right top drawer, finishing to the right, regular to the left. Tools are in a metal cabinet in labeled drawers. Yes, it took all day originally to sort them out, but now I know exactly what’s available when I start a project, and don’t spend the first half of the allotted time locating the stuff I need to do it, or getting half way through and having to go buy what is probably lost in the garage somewhere.

Add CD’s to that list, too.

My dad stored things in jars the way Praise’s dad did, and he also had a long row of Prince Albert cans which held things such as bits of bathroom floor tile – separated by black and white – and most likely, bent nails as well. I know I probably bent quite a few in my time. Daddy would give me a plank or a short length of 2 × 4 and a bunch of nails, and a small hammer, and I’d be happy as a lark planting forests around the little houses I build out of small right-angle braces, with those "zig-zag nails for the roof.

our daughter who will inherit the house has mentioned more than once that some things need to go before we do

tsk tsk tsk ….. more than one kind of “wasted space” here or is it ……“waste OF space”?

Nails are inexpensive enough that I’d rather recycle bent ones and get new ones… of course, if they were the only ones that would fit the task, I might try to straighten them…

Until I design and build a nail straightener. I WILL get that doghouse built someday.

When we were kids dad gave us all the bent nails. We would straighten them and use them in our projects. If they bent again, we’d just hammer them sideways into the wood.

This past winter I sorted ALL my nuts, bolts, screw, and nails by size. After I was done I realized it would have been cheaper to just go out and buy new ones than spend over $300 on tiny drawer cabinets to keep them in.