On saving things ‘Just in Case’

I come from a family of packrats. Both sides, unfortunately– my mom and my dad were both packrats. I have aunts, uncles, cousins… we’re all packrats. At least I recognize this and can fight against it, but I still, often, lose the fight.
Tonight I found myself looking for something I’m sure I would have packed away somewhere. Something that, when I’m fighting the packrat, I would look at and say, “I’ll never need this,” but then, the packrat says, “Hey, you never know!”¹ So then when times like tonight come along, I have to wonder: who won? The packrat? Or the other guy?
What I needed tonight was an insignificant piece of metal. One that I would have kept around for a while, and I’m sure if I look a while longer, I’ll find it.  But I probably did get rid of it at some point, thinking, “I’ll never need this… if I do want to remove a PCI card, I’ll be replacing it with another one,” or, “I’ve got loads of old computers sitting around here doing nothing; If I need one, I’ll just take it from the stock.”  As I spent 30 minutes or so digging for that little piece of metal to block the hole in the back of my G4, I of course didn’t find one. I did, however, find some other things…

• 1 Memory Card Reader that I’ve been missing for 5 years. I thought it got lost in the move. I thought maybe I’d left it at my last job. Nope– right there in a box, waiting for me to find it tonight.
• 1 voice recorder (iRock VM150- apparently the company is offline, but I found a review here) that I’ve been missing for approx 5 years. I remember taking it to San Francisco where I recorded the sound of the cable cars and their bells as well as to a Flaming Lips concert- New Years 2003 in Chicago. Unfortunately that audio wasn’t still on there, but seems I did use the MP3 player function for 1 song: This one, which was a major player on our San Francisco 2003 soundtrack.
• 1 Graduation card. Signed, sealed, addressed to a friend who was a year behind me in school. High School. So apparently I’ve had that sitting around for… yes, 10.5 years now. How did that ever get into a box here in my house halfway across the country?? It’s even in a new box, so I apparently transferred it there at some point.
• 1 credit card from a bank I’ve never heard of. The bank likely does not exist anymore and the expiration date on the card was… 1999. It had a credit limit of $500, which wouldn’t get me very far these days. So apparently I have heard of the bank enough to apply and receive a credit card from them. When I was a freshman in college.

There’s loads of other great stuff in there, I’m sure, but for now I must rest. It is a school-night, after all.

¹ “You never know!” is a phrase which I will always attribute to my dad. Fortunately it goes through my head every time I try to ‘find a place’ for something I don’t really need, so I think of him often