Facial tissue (aka “Kleenex”) I don’t make a shopping list, either, and I can never remember when the various tissue boxes in my house are empty…and they are very tricky about being “almost” empty (one day you wake up and you’re using the last tissue!) so I buy some at the store…and the three-packs are cheaper…and wow the squares are on sale…and now I have enough Kleenex to supply a small army of people with colds.
I try to horde toilet paper but I never have enough scratch to get too much at once. Just a 20-pack at a time (I’m a single person)…I bow down to Cicero and all the other Dopers who manage to have an entire closet full!!
Wicker/wood/grass baskets - like the kind you find at Hobby Lobby, World Market or Pier 1. I see them and I feel the need to have them, even though right now I have absolutely NO ROOM for them.
Yarn and needles, though I am clearly an amateur when it comes to this as I’ve seen on Ravelry.
The other is notebooks. I have more notebooks than I really need. About 3 or 4 full size ones picked up because I had an idea and NEEDED paper to write but didn’t have any on me. Then add in the dozen or so smaller sized notebooks (either swag from trade fairs, or also picked up because I needed something to write down… now I just keep a moleskine in my purse along with a pen). I’d guess I have 15-20 notebooks of varying sizes and purposes (one is solely for knitting notes, another I use for grocery lists, one has a mix of poetry and quotes, the large ones are for ideas and longer writings and there is much overlap). Not a single one is even near full, several are nearly full but most are about 1/4 to 1/2 full.
I just love new notebooks and fresh pens. It’s a weakness. Especially if the notebooks have a design that catches my eye, though the bigger ones are plain and were bought solely because inspiration hit when I had no paper.
Also scrap paper. I have a drawer bursting with Post-it notes, memo pads, stationery, spiral notebooks with only half the pages used, etc. It’s perfectly good paper, I can’t throw it out! I make the kids use it for doodling on or working out math problems and we still can’t use it all up.
I have so many pairs of socks it is unbelievable, especially because most of the time I wear sandals. There is nothing special about them. They are just regular white hanes socks, but for some reason it feels nice to know that when I need a pair, I have about 100 pairs at my disposal.
I always ask for more every birthday and christmas.
Pens. I get pens from hotels (I love the style of the usual hotel pen) and I’m not ever going to have to buy a pen as long as I live.
SF books. I’ve got at least a thousand on my to read list that I own and haven’t read yet. But that’s a collection, so maybe it doesn’t count.
Jigsaw puzzles, both ones I’ve done and one’s I haven’t done. I do sell or try to give away some, but most I keep. It’s easy to get too many at $1 each from the thrift store. That’s hoarding.
As for food, we made a decision to stop buying ahead so far, so we’re better. Both of our parents used to have closets filled with soap, toothpaste, shaving cream, toilet paper and tissues.
The people who owned this house before we bought it were hoarders. And they must not have wanted the stuff much because they left it all behind. We have inherited:
At least 20 tubes of silicone sealer, still in the blister packs
Glue sticks (like kids use in school), again, in the original packaging
Razor blades (the old-fashioned kind you fit into the end of a paint scraper), boxes of them–more than I could use in 10 lifetimes of scraping or shaving or ?!?
Upholstery tacks–jars upon jars
Every can of paint they’d ever bought–maybe 30 cans
I wish they’d been toilet paper hoarders. Or diamond jewelry hoarders. Or $100 bill hoarders. 'Cause THAT stuff I could use.
I hoard a delightful little drink called Ski. It is bottled by Gem Bottling in a small town near my parents house. I love the stuff so much - every time I drive up there I buy a case. That wasn’t a problem at first, but now I’m up there one or two times a week.
If you’re ever in South-Eastern Ohio, try it out. People near here will know what you’re talking about - well, near where it’s sold, which is about 3 counties, but not here .
This is slightly unrelated, but for a friend’s birthday I recently pooled with a few other friends to get a small trophy engraved with “World’s Greatest Hoarderer” and her name because of her amusing but ever so slightly frustrating habit of taking things from people (ranging from mundane items such as watches to slightly less inconspicuous objects such as halo headbands and guitars) and keeping them for as long as she wishes to keep them. She does this just for the sake of taking things and watching her victims suffer, but she’s one of those people you can’t help loving so we put up with it.
To answer the OP, I’ve got a whole pile of notebooks too, mostly received as birthday presents, though now I’ve actually started using them, which is really good. I like having a place to write things down. I keep the ones I’ve filled up in a shoebox with a garfield sticker on top. Oh yeah, I also used to keep all my shoeboxes but I’ve gotten over that. Only have about 3 (all in use) now. I have a little green Winnie-the-Pooh box with one of those cheap tiny padlocks on it that a friend got me as a parting present in which I keep all my “special” top-secret memory-inducing things. Not cards though, I have a bag filled with all the birthday and Christmas and Valentine’s Day cards etc that I’ve received since I was about 7. I used to collect stickers when I was younger, so I have millions of those in another shoebox along with paper-y craft-y stuff which I use for wrapping gifts/making cards. Under my desk is a pile of stationery in a basket. Most of the pens don’t work.
Oh, and JEWELLERY!! I love my necklaces and my bracelets and my earrings (the ones I’m not allergic to, at least) and I have bags and boxes full of them. Also, I always try to keep a couple of hair pins and hair ties on me in case of an emergency (many lives have been saved due to my foresight). I keep my hair ties in a heart-shaped box I made in primary school and the pins in a coffin-shaped box a friend made me last year. Yeah, I also hoard boxes. And bags.
I tend to use everything I’ve listed, of course, or I’d feel kinda guilty about all of it going to waste.
Books, I hoard books. I rarely get rid of any and I keep buying more. I have about 40-50 in queue to be read. I constantly jump other books into the queue.
I’m down to 80 hours vacation and it’s terrifying. Granted, I have another 80 hours coming before the end of the year, but that’s only 4 weeks!
SWMBO is a TP hoarder. I once got a phone call at work, almost frantic she informed me that we were almost out! “Gadzooks!” I thought, “I’d better get some on the way home. Maybe they can use tissues or something until 5:30”
When I got home I discovered “Almost out” means “One 12 pack”
I also hoard ammo. Not in any apocalyptic paranoia way, just won’t shoot the last box of anything (because then I’d be out) and I’ll pick up another box of .45 or .223 whenever I’m at a sporting goods store. Gotta have at least 200 rounds of .45 and 500 .223. Some of that .45 has been bouncing around the safe for a decade or more.
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