NUTS ABOUT NUTS (and bolts, screws, etc.)

In my basement are cans and jars filled with nuts, bolts,
screws, washers, and nails of every size, shape and description.
How did they get there?

Gradually, that’s how. One could not accumulate a
magnificent assortment such as I have in a matter of weeks or
months. It takes years and years.

You homeowners out there who share this problem with me know, as
do I, where most of the blame lies. It’s the fault of the
companies who manufacture and package these things. The problem is
in the packaging. You need one or two wood screws and on arriving
at your local hardware store you find that the wood screws are
packaged in 6’s, 8’s and sometimes 12’s. That’s how
it happens.

What can be done about it?

Apparently nothing.

The thing with faucet washers is particularly bad. You have a
leaky faucet, so you run off to the hardware store. In every box of
15 faucet washers there may be 3 or 4 that fit a faucet somewhere
in your house. I don’t know what the rest of them
fit–certainly nothing in the house. So, they accumulate.

A few years ago I did take one significant step. I organized my
left  over nuts, bolts, screws, washers and nails. I dumped
everything on the dining room table and began sorting.

What a magnificent array–round-headed wood screws, flat-headed
wood screws, sheet-metal screws, flat washers, lock washers, rubber
washers, plastic washers, square nuts, hexagonal nuts, octagonal
nuts. It was kind of fun running my fingers through all of
them.

Now I have all of them in baby food jars on my basement shelves.
That, of course, doesn’t help in finding any use for all of the
stuff, but it certainly looks neat and well organized.

I got all those baby food jars when we lived in a different
neighborhood about three years ago. I mention this because I see a
problem just over the horizon. Our present neighborhood is composed
of ‘older’ families–all the kids are of junior high and
high school age. Soon I’m going to need more baby food jars and
to find them in our present neighborhood would mean that a couple
of medical miracles would have to occur. That failing, we may have
to move.

My wife doesn’t understand the problem clearly. Recently
when she was cleaning in the basement, she knocked one of the baby
food jars off the shelf. It fell to the floor and broke. It
contained about three dozen sheet metal screws, which I have never
used and probably never will use but I can’t just throw them
away.

I glared at my wife and pointed out that her clumsiness had just
cost me a baby food jar–and they’re very   hard to
come by. As she was sweeping up the sheet metal screws, she glared
back at me and said, ‘When are you going to do something with
all this junk?’

Isn’t that just like a woman? The question is not
‘when’ but ‘what.’

There’s one thing about my collection that both intrigues
and bothers me. There’s one particular screw that’s the
strangest thing I’ve ever seen. It was not in the house when we
moved in and I certainly never bought it.

It has a spherical head, a slot in the head and about the same
degree of taper as most screws. It could not be screwed into metal
and it doesn’t look like any wood screw I’ve ever seen.

One day I took it with me on a trip to the hardware store. I
pulled it out of my pocket and showed it to the clerk. He very
nearly panicked. He thought I wanted more of them. ‘No,’ I
explained, ‘I’d just like to know what it is.’ He had
to confess he’d never seen anything like it before.

That gave me an idea. How about a show–competition–in which
participants would exhibit their odd nuts, bolts, screws, washers
and nails? That could become bigger than the beer can craze. Maybe
I could take first prize in the Mid-Atlantic Regionals and maybe I
couldn’t, but I certainly would be a serious contender.

Until that time, I’ve got to find some more baby food
jars.