While working on rebuilding the back porch of Dad's cabin with him, I reflected on the packrat mentality that seems to be an integral part of my family culture. I'm certain that it's a cultural and not a genetic thing, because I'm not biologically related to him, or to his father, the king of pack rats. For grandpa "Pa" Herman, it was an attitude that he learned as a young man experiencing the Great Depression. My father was born in 1936, and he remembers all too well the type of frugality required to survive in the pre-war years.
Anyway, all three generations of our family that I've seen as adults had or have garages and homes packed to the gills with "stuff". Not necessarily new shiny stuff, but just stuff, tucked away on a shelf or in a drawer, "just in case."
When the "just in case" was rebuilding the back porch 45 miles from the nearest lumber yard or hardware store, Dad had stashed away a length of 2x6 that was long enough to build a new joist, and a piece of 2x4 that was just about right for the new stair tread. If he hadn't tucked them away however long ago, we'd have had to wait until he'd gone home and come back, having made a trip to Home Depot in the meantime. Upstairs in the cabin there's a ton of potentially useful items mouldering away; lumber, pipe and fittings, wire and electrical fittings, and all kinds of tools - duplicates of things we have in our garages at home.
The "wise" thing to do, it would seem, is to only purchase one of each kind of tool we might need, and merely do a better job of planning what tools to bring from home to the cabin on each trip. However, in this case, and on many other occasions, having the right tools and supplies for the job on hand saved us time and money.
In my own garage, for example, the amount of stuff is overwhelming at times. There's partial rolls of fiberglass insulation and a half a bag of blow-in insulation, a bundle of shingles the same color as the roof on the house, partial cans of paint from each room's color. There's an entire box full of old hinges, door handles and latches, boxes full of plumbing fittings, electrical outlets, and sprinkler parts. There are extra trailer hitch balls, converters for every imaginable type of trailer lighting connector, and nearly any type of screw, bolt, nut, nail, staple or fastener. There's mortar, paste, glue, grease, and dozens of cans of spray paint.
Then, there's some truly odd stuff. I have a blade for an antique scythe, a couple of rings from horse collars, an old tv tube, two AT&T brand D batteries, a 120/12V transformer, two wheel weights from a long-dead riding lawn mower, a spare drawer for a vanity I don't possess, a bucket of extra socket wrenches, the bunk bed and back door (WHY??) from the old camper, six inches from the end of a logging chain, a jacuzzi pump (I don't own a Jacuzzi), two shovel blades, a kit to make a wood stove out of a 55 gallon drum, a sturgeon pole (never been sturgeon fishing), extra boot bolts and fins for wakeboards, and so much other stuff that it's really impossible to list.
When I'm working on little repair or construction projects around the house, I often wander out to the garage and find something that will help me finish the job without a trip to the hardware store. It's impossible to know ahead of time just what might be required, so I hang on to everything. A month or so ago, I poured a concrete box for my irrigation line near the driveway, and for some odd reason I held on to the used pieces of wood I'd cut out to fit around the pipe as a concrete form. Last week, when I was working on the irrigation project down at a neighbor's place, those same pieces of wood, with minor mods, worked perfectly to form up a box around the new pipe we'd installed and the old pipe, so we could seal things up with concrete. I just never know, and my packrat instincts work out for the best every so often.
As you might imagine, finding things in my garage can be a bit of a challenge, and I can often be seen wandering about with a puzzled look, muttering to myself, "I know I have one of those somewhere..." Would it actually be more time-efficient if I just ran to the store?
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