Second guessing yourself is fatal! Soon end up with an empty skip that way.

Facing the same exercise myself albeit on a bigger scale with over 50 years of serious hoarding to deal with. Do I, or any other sane person, need those Ariel Leader parts?

Hardest things to come to terms with is the way prices of so much stuff have dropped over the last quarter of a century in both real and absolute terms and how easy it is to get even quite obscure things via E-Bay et al. Much of my hoard was kept not from real need but because it would have been too expensive to buy if wanted or take ages to get.

Whats really messing with my head is that post redundancy jackpot and post retirement I'm "rich" as in being able to afford pretty much anything sane I really want. Dropping 20,000 + commuting miles a year really makes a difference! But at 64 the good years are running short so its daft to spend loads of time on make do, modify and mend on things I can just order and wait for 2 or 3 day delivery. But escaping habits ingrained by a lifetime of necessity is hard.

Just off to weld some more offcuts of speed frame square tube section together to make some shelves for the loft. Stupid waste of time. Yup I know but when you have a stash of 10" to 4 ft randoms that add up to more than needed throwing is hard.

Putting the words "throw" and "away" in the same sentence has always seemed vaguely obscene.

Clive.

I've found exactly the opposite; keeping stuff simply doesn't work. I shared a lockup with a mate and, when we had the time, found all sorts of festering crap: 8 pairs of Capri taillights, a knackered blue leather(which was torn!) bench seat from a Dodge Diplomat, broken 100E instrument cowls and lots of random stuff. The key to this is to never clear up and your own, and to be ruthless, if it's broken, damaged, incomplete or unidentifiable you don't think about it and just bin it immediately. If you find something that might be of use to someone else, deliver it to them.

All those stubs of material that were in the chuck when you made the part? What are you actually going to use them for? And how are you going to do it? I cleared a complete drawer by getting rid of them.

I do keep tools, but even that has problems; I don't need more than two of most, and still have some BA spanners that were my grandfather's which I've never used – he died 24 years ago and hadn't used them since he retired 20 years earlier.

One more thing. If you do keep stuff, box it up, label it and write the date on the box. Then when you have another tidy up in 10 years time you won't even need to open the box, just carry it out to the skip.

I think theres a middle ground for this sort of question, i think anyone who's marginally sensible will be able to tell when something might be useful or when it's just using up empty space.

Lots of people remark on hoarders but then there is the opposite of throwing anything and everything away, and then to only end up buying again what you threw away when you thought it wasn't needed. Not to mention the environmental cost of just dumping everything.

Michael W

Often it is items like old catalogues or manuals that would have been most useful to future historians/restorers of old ‘junk’ etc.

That's all new stuff then. I ended up with boxes of good "stock" from my old man's shed that I reckon dated back to when he was a foundry apprentice in the 1940s. Included was a raw casting for a 3" steam or water valve handle that my son and I finally machined up a while ago to make the flywheel for a Potty Mill Engine. Three generations of hoarding finally comes to fruition!

On the other hand, when the old man died some years back, I had to hire two blokes with a small dump truck to haul all the leftover junk out of his shed. Took them two or three trips and cost about $500.

So it would have been a lot cheaper (and less work) to have just bought a flywheel casting from Stuart Models!

Whenever I have a clear out, you can be absolutely certain that whatever is thrown away / recycled, will be desperately required in a couple of month's time.

Just another version of Sod's Law.

Andrew.

Chucking out is a sure fire way of finding that you needed what ever it was, so are garage/car boot sales.

Ian S C

..literally, the only time I ever need anything is just after I've thrown it out..

the universe mocks us so..

That is so true I seem to collect so much stuff of "It may be useful one day" then have a clear out thinking that I have never needed these item only to find out that two days after it has gone that I did need it.