Now let me preface this by saying I’m NOT a hoarder. I have lots of other quirks and faults, but hoarding isn’t one of them.
But my SO…geez.
Going through a basket of miscellaneous crap the other day to do a chuck-out, I came across a hunk of metal known as a ‘page-hole-puncher’. It was a handy thing back in the days of foolscap folders, when you could get any old bit of paper, bung some holes in it, and VOILA…it would fit neatly into your ring-binder and you were set! The last time I used or saw a ring-binder was back in the 1990’s when my kids were at secondary school.
They’ve gone the way of the dinosaur now, and anyway, you can buy paper with the HOLES ALREADY PRE-HOLED so to speak. In fact, pre-holed foolscap paper has been around since Moses played footy in the Under 18 reserves. Actually, take that back…I think FOOLSCAP paper is now extinct too…it’s A4 all the way down baby!
So I went to throw the hole-puncher into the bin.
“That’s a good thing to have”, says he.
“What the fuck for?” says me.
**
“I might need that one day”**. :rolleyes:
Dude, we have computers now. Last time you wrote anything on any bit of paper was probably 20 yrs ago…certainly you haven’t in the time I’ve known you (twelve years now). You didn’t even know that thing had been in that basket for so long, but now it’s resurrected, you want to keep it??
I understand keeping things for sentimental reasons, or maybe with the hope that today’s bit of junk might magically increase in value over a few years…who knows?
Actually, I used a hole puncher last week. I’d printed out some stuff, and I put it in a binder. Had to be careful to leave a wider margin at the binder side of the paper, but it was handy.
I’m a teacher–I own at least three 3-hole-punchers. 3-ring binders are still very common among students in the US.
I am not a hoarder, though I am a bit of a packrat and–like your husband–I tend to hold on to things because I might use them someday. But actually I’m pretty good about going through all my stuff about once a year and getting rid of things that I haven’t used in a while. My house is normal and neat and not cluttered, but my closets tend to get pretty full until I do a clear-out.
We keep all our financial information for the year in a binder. Some of it comes with holes already punched, but some does not, so we use our punch all the time.
I save hardware I don’t use from multipacks, as well as left over screws. When my the pole holding up the clothes in my wife’s closet collapsed, I was able to fix it without even going to the hardware store. I don’t know if that counts as hoarding, but I won’t give it up. It has come in handy too often.
I hear ya. I’m in the middle of a big cull and apparently, the things “we might need one day” consist of pretty much everything in the throw-out box :rolleyes:
It’s true that I can’t remember the last time I needed to do that in my personal life - punch holes in hardcopy printouts to assemble them into a binder of some kind - but I’ve definitely done it around 5 times in the last 10 years.
The problem is, a hole puncher is one of those things where you might never use it for who knows how long of a stretch, but when you need one it’s NOT something you can really McGyver up an ersatz tool for the job. For just one piece of paper, sure, you can just stab a piece of paper with a pencil or a pen in three strategic places to get it to fit into the binder (I’ve defnitely done that as a student), but if you’re trying to do it for 25+ sheets of paper? Or if you care about how it looks? Uh-uh.
At home I have a one-hole puncher that I think I’ve had since high school back in the 1980s that I used to carry in my school backpack. I’ve used it several times over the past 10 years, because sometimes you just need to punch a hole in something (example: our Tooth Fairy has a habit of leaving $2 bills for teeth, but will punch holes in the bill if the tooth is found to have any cavities - one for one). And my kids played “train conductor” with it at some point too.
The really useless stuff to accumulate is not hardcopy related tools like binders, paper cutters, hole punchers, scissors, etc., since plenty of stuff still needs to be printed out or distributed in hardcopy form… It’s the obsolete computer related media technology, where you’ve already transferred or converted the needed associated data or have given up on ever reading it again.
Things I threw out last year in the “never gonna use again” box in the closet:
Sync cradle with a 9-pin serial port connector for a Palm m505, m515
SCSI-1 cables of various lengths
Two ZIP drives, one 100MB parallel port and one 250 MB SCSI port
Memory chips of various sizes and speeds for ancient motherboards, e.g., 64MB 72-pin SIMMs
I have a certain drawer in my desk full of these kinds of office supplies. There’s a three hole punch… and pushpins, paperclips, rubber bands, stapler and extra staples in two sizes, a rainbow package of Sharpie markers, several packages of index cards, and foil star stickers. I don’t know if I’ve ever used any of it.
We have a single hole puncher for our son. It helped him build up the muscles in his left hand enough to write. We haven’t used it in a couple of years, though, since he was having trouble with fine motor control.
This is why I vastly prefer to do my culling of stuff when Mr. Neville is not around. If he’s around, he’s going to want to go through everything I want to get rid of and find reasons why we shouldn’t get rid of it. If he’s not, he’ll never miss the stuff that he had forgotten was there. (I only do this for my stuff, not his, so it’s not like I’m throwing out his stuff without his permission)
Our parents, though, were helping us get stuff out of our basement, and they got him to let them get rid of all kinds of stuff. I wish I knew how they did it.
I need to nag him again to go through some of his books, so I can take some to Half Price Books to sell and make room for baby books.
Damn, I coulda used them! My old ZIP drive developed the “click of death” and I still have a few ZIP disks I didn’t get copied onto another medium before it terminally failed.
There’s a difference between “I use one every day at work” and “It’s an integral part of my bookkeeping scheme” and the OP’s “Hasn’t written anything on paper in 20 years.” YOU guys who use them every day obviously need them hanging around your house/workplace but does it make sense for someone who hasn’t used one in 20 years and probably won’t use it for 20 more years to keep one around?
I’m guessing no. And that’s the hoarding aspect of it.
The SO in the OP should toss it and if it comes up in the future that one is needed, and needed badly, he can buy a new one. I’m guessing it won’t ever come up in their lives again.
I have a 3-hole punch at home. It’s about the size of a ruler and is made to fit in a binder. The cost was minimal and the size even more minimal. That’s the kind of 3-hole punch you hang on to without use for 20 years. The humongous ones that are “a hunk of metal” are really, really taking up useable space!
A great many of the old The Bell System Practice (BSP) documents and binders used a 4-hole punch.
Speaking of antique office supplies, I have a “Paper Welder” on my desk. Not really practical compared to a stapler, but it looks pretty cool.
My spouse and I have separate 3-hole punches and we have a collective 1-hole punch. (He has a multi-size rotary hole punch for leather, but that’s a Tool and therefore sacred.) While we’re both a bit on the hoardy side :), we don’t save these things out of sentiment or compulsion. We still use them regularly. Additionally, I can buy a ream of 3-hole punched multipurpose paper at Staples for $9.50. The same paper without holes is about $7.80. For a price difference like that, I don’t have a problem finding space for our archaic little machines.
I’m pretty good about throwing out obsolete/unused electronics. Old memory cards just aren’t ever going to come back into use.
But things like paper punches and other manual tools? Sure, I’ll keep it. It’s not like my house is full. And if I need one ever 5 years, why would I throw it out now, just to buy another one in 2017, when I need it again?
My downfall is magazines. Especially things like “Home Handyman” and “Consumer Report”. But really, I might want to build a book case in 2 years and I will have thrown out the plans in that old magazine!!!
Ever try to cull books for disposal or donation? It’s not working real well in our house, despite the fact that we’ve actually donated about a half dozen grocery bags full. Typical scenario is that for every ten books I look through, I find two keepers and eight to go. Then my husband looks at the eight and declares four or five to be keepers. Result is that now we have stacks of keepers all over the place as we try to continue culling from the “junk room” that we want to clear out so that it can be used.
Do we really need a 50-year old hardcover copy of The Three Musketeers? Apparently, since it’s old and hardcover, according to my husband. Will you ever read it? No, but it’s old, and hardcover!
