Dad, we're NEVER GONNA USE THIS SHIT!!!

Dear everyone:
Look at my name.

unnecessary details:

I literally have old toys and books lying around inside my closet at home which literally date back to when I was probably 8(I'm 21 now). I have boxes upon boxes of shit stacked up, full of various trinkets and gizmos and shit.
Hell, I have like 10 different kerchief ties from my Boy Scout days, and at least 4 different kerchiefs. For some reason, I even feel compelled to hold on to all of my junk from those days, including the broken plastic merit-badge holder from my cub scout days as well. These things don't even have sentimental value to me.

Old drawings from my middle school days when I was all "wooo animu! :3" and tried futilely to make my own manga. Looking back, that stuff is so ridiculously shameful that I would feel compelled to burn it if it weren't for the fact that I just can't bring myself to throw this stuff away. Oh, that reminds me, I have drawers full of old notebooks from third grade. Don't ask me why I still have it lying around.

Or, how about the tons of copper wire and electronic shit.
I've been taking broken appliances apart since I could hold a screwdriver. No joke. Invariably, this results in a vast array of circuit boards which take up way too much space. So, in an effort to try and consolidate space, I would just rip the parts off of the circuit board and put them in a huge plastic pickle jar. Of course I know now that I what I have in my possession is nothing but a smelly old pickle jar full of utterly useless parts. Still, I don't get rid of it.

Just a year ago, my dad had to buy another lawnmower because the frame for the one he had at the time was basically irreparable. What do I do? Take off the motor, and set it up in the basement to also gather dust, should I ever decide to embark upon a project where I might need an old 2Hp lawnmower engine. (You never know!)
Old TVs you say? I'll rip it apart, take the electronics into my room (really, closet) and leave the tube itself to sit in the basement gathering dust.
Old, broken tools? I'll rip it apart, try to get it working, and if that fails harvest the copper wire, leaving the remaining parts to lie in a box or on a tool-bench.
You get the idea.
Now that I think about it, I can't imagine how my mom maintains her sanity looking at all of the junk I just leave lying around.

I have at least three desks, and amongst them, three of them are completely unusable for anything but carefully balancing more stuff on. Since I'm away to school now, I'm working on cluttering a fourth desk. :3
Speaking of which, when I move off to school, I pretty much fill up a minivan every time I move. And thats only the stuff which I gather together which I think I MIGHT need or want at school.

Anyways, I don't see any end in sight for this habit.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My mom's a packrat and when my dad throws out her stuff when she's not around, she promptly goes batshit insane. It's not without merit because (among many many other things) we have a cupboard full of used, clean starbucks cups. Various outings to starbucks would always include my mom diligently reminding us "Don't throw away the cups, I want them".

It's really hilarious because my mom claims to keep these things in case we need to use them in the future but when I asked her a couple weeks ago to dig me up some index card, she couldn't find them. Even though she's accumulated possibly packs upon packs of index cards over the years (filching company stock, drug store closing sales, etc), amongst the hundreds of boxes we have in the garage, she couldn't locate a single index card. She says "I swear I just saw them the other day...", gets tired of looking and I go out to the local CVS to buy a $2 pack of index cards.

Proabably after a lifetime of dealing with my mom's hoarding, I've really adopted my dad's personality in that I'm an unsentimental asshole. I throw away people's letters, pictures, gifts, etc. because I haven't used them and don't forsee using them.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by kat

My mom's a packrat and when my dad throws out her stuff when she's not around, she promptly goes batshit insane. It's not without merit because (among many many other things) we have a cupboard full of used, clean starbucks cups. Various outings to starbucks would always include my mom diligently reminding us "Don't throw away the cups, I want them".

Hey, the plastic Starbucks cups are of surprisingly high quality. They can withstand dishwasher cycles, even.

Save them up for your next kegger

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Being a mechanic, one of the rules is "never throw anything away." My childhood didn't have much useless shit, maybe just some boxes in the closet and along the walls of the garage, but never so much that it got in the way.

But anyways, I still try to save useful stuff as much as possible, but as you know, car parts can take up quite a bit of space, and can accumulate fast. So I also have to be mindful of what is a good investment in saving something, and what will just get in the way.

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