Anytime you trash a piece of furniture, take the hardware off and stick it in a drawer.    Or if you are like me you can separate them into little compartments in your garage.  You may need it later.  I’ve done this for years with everything from screws, nuts and bolts, to drawer pulls.  I’ve only had to run over to the Tractor Supply once in the past ten years for a weird screw that I didn’t have to replace a light fixture I was installing.

First, it keeps things out of the landfill that will NEVER decompose.  Second, who knows when you will need just a random screw.  Who wants to be driving across town to buy that?  Not me, see above.  It costs me gas money and time.  My time is worth a lot of money.

I love YouTube.  You can learn anything now.  Granted there are a LOT of people on there who know very little about what they are doing and think that they are experts, so you have to be careful about who’s advice you are following.

When I find a YouTuber that I like, I almost always go back to the beginning of their channel and watch everything forward just like a TV show.  The problem with this is that I don’t feel like I can leave a comment on something that happened three years ago.

Example:  One of the women that I watch likes to organize, clean and build stuff.  Which is right up my alley.  She decided that to store things better, she needed to get rid of her cheap particle board armoires that were taking up too much room.  She took the time to dismantle them and put them out for the garbage truck.  The entire time I’m yelling at the screen for her to save the hardware.  It was really good hardware; cheap particle board pretend wood, but excellent hardware.  Go figure.

Fast forward in YouTube time to three months later and she’s building something again.  You know what’s coming.  She went to Home Depot and spent $13.00 EACH for new hinges for her project.  After THROWING AWAY PERFECTLY EXCELLENT HINGES in the garbage.

I’m not suggesting that you become a hoarder and keep things that definitely need to go into the garbage.  Notice I didn’t say, Hey, she should have keep that broken particle board, just in case!  No.  I understand that some things are garbage.  But even if she didn’t keep the hardware, she could have put it all in a baggy and donated it and someone would have happily bought it for a few bucks.  Instead of having to run over to the Home Depot and spending $13.00 EACH for hinges.

Anywho, just don’t throw them away!  Do you keep hardware from things that are no longer useful?

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