Spring is definitely here….
My allergies are already going crazy, I've gotten my first sunburn of the year and even more taxing is the spring cleaning bug that shows up around this time every year .
As you may remember from my recent article (Picking Through Scraps To Find Gold),
This is a fantastic way to stock up on many different items for free that might cost you an arm and a leg otherwise.
There is one thing that I forgot to mention.
Before you toss something out, especially items that are broken beyond repair, you need to give it a final once over to see if there is anything you can cannibalize and re use.
Before i get rid of any old electronic device I will take it out to my garage and strip it of any screws, nuts, wire, and bolts that could be useful later.
The same goes for any broken piece of furniture.
It never fails that when you need a certain size screw or bolt for that project you've been working on, you never have the exact one you need.
I always get strange looks when I open my toolbox and others see it littered with screws and other miscellaneous odds and ends, but I cant tell you how often these scraps have become invaluable to me.
I learned to do this from my father and he learned to do it from his father.
My grandfather has dozens of old aluminum coffee cans filled to the brim with old screws, nails, bolts, etc. Each one is labeled by size and material ( IE: 1″ wood screws, 10mm bolts)
When i asked him where he learned this habit from, I expected him to say his father…. I was wrong.
Growing up on a farm there were plenty of rats that needed to be dispatched. So many that even the Barn Cats they had could barely put a dent in the population.
In the spring when the number of rats boomed, it became Papa's job to take care of the problem.
He said that he was always dumbfounded at all of the little things that these rats brought back to their hidey holes and packed into their nests.
Ever since then he figured if they could do it so could he.
He even had a name for his collection, Rat's nests.
I have always found it ironic that the pest he was charged with getting rid of ended up teaching him a valuable and money saving skill.
Think about it, If that bolt is hard to find now, what will you do when TSHTF and you need to repair a broken door, cover a broken window, or build a raised bed garden?
I will say that I am no where near as organized as my grandfathers collection or rat's nests, but he has had half a century more than I to perfect it.
So when you get ready to do your spring cleaning this year, make sure you take a good hard look at what you're throwing away. You will be kicking yourself later if you are one bolt short of fixing something that is vital to your survival.
Do you have your own Rat's Nest?
Do you think that having this would be beneficial to your survival?
