Every repair on the other pages in this domain needs a part, and in the situation this app describes the shop is the last place that part comes from. The second-to-last place is a broken thing you already own.
Salvage is not hoarding. Hoarding is keeping the carcass. Salvage is taking the four useful parts out of it in ten minutes and letting the rest go, and the difference between those two habits is the difference between a resource and a burden.
What is actually scarce
Instinct says keep the expensive parts. Instinct is wrong: what runs out first is the small, dull, universal stuff.
Nothing on that list is worth money and every item on it stops a repair dead when you do not have it.
Strip everything for fasteners
Take every screw, bolt, nut, washer, hinge, catch, bracket, handle, knob and stud off anything going out.
- Sort by size into jars. Unsorted fasteners are useless. A jar of assorted screws is something you tip out on the floor and put back.
- Keep the odd ones separately and labelled: metric bolts, machine screws, self-tappers, wood screws.
- Furniture is the best source of cam locks, dowels, threaded inserts and bolts. Flat-pack furniture is almost entirely fasteners.
- Appliances are the best source of self-tapping screws and small machine screws.
- Keep the special tools if a thing uses an unusual driver.
Hinges and catches are worth their weight. So are drawer runners, castors, magnetic catches and door furniture.
Textiles and soft goods
Nothing textile goes in a bin whole.
- Zips, sliders, buttons, press studs, buckles, D-rings, webbing, elastic, velcro, drawcords and toggles. See zip repair: a dead coat is a full-length zip and two sliders.
- Sound fabric to the patch bag, sorted roughly by weight: heavy canvas and denim for knees and workwear, cotton shirting for lighter repairs. See patching and darning.
- Thread from long seams can be reclaimed if it is sound.
- Worn cotton to the rag bag, then to cleaning, then to char cloth.
- Leather from bags, belts and old boots for strops, washers, hinges and repairs. Leather is genuinely difficult to replace.
- Foam and wadding for insulation and padding.
- Wool can be unravelled from knitwear and reknitted, which is slow and completely real.
Timber and sheet material
- Denail everything before it goes in the pile. A nail found later with a saw ruins the saw and can throw the workpiece.
- Sort by size, and keep hardwood separate from softwood. Hardwood offcuts become the dowels, wedges, splines and patches that furniture repairs need.
- Pallets are an excellent free source, with two cautions: check the stamp for heat treatment rather than chemical fumigation, and never burn treated or painted timber indoors.
- Plywood and sheet offcuts for patches, boarding up and repairs. See boarding up.
- Keep a small offcut box and a big timber rack, and be ruthless about the size below which it becomes kindling.
Wire cord and cable
- Mains leads off any dead appliance: the cable, the plug and the strain relief are all useful, and the cable is good quality flexible copper.
- Low voltage wire from anything electronic.
- Any rope, cord, bungee, shockcord or string. Coil it, whip or tape the ends, and hang it. See knots and lashings.
- Fencing wire, coat hangers and baling wire for improvised fixings and repairs.
- Chain, cable ties, carabiners, hooks and eyes.
Coil and label lengths. A tangle of wire in a box is not a resource.
Mechanical parts worth having
- Bearings from anything that spun. Skateboard, roller blind, washing machine drum.
- Magnets from dead speakers and hard drives, which are extremely strong and useful for tool holders and for retrieving dropped screws.
- Springs of every size, which are essentially unmakeable at home.
- Small motors and gearboxes, and the wheels and castors off anything that rolled.
- Pumps from washing machines and dishwashers.
- Glass and mirrors, cut down for glazing repairs, cold frames and solar work. Handle with the same care as boarding up describes.
- Nuts and bolts from bicycles, plus inner tubes, which are one of the most useful salvage materials there is: straps, clamping bands, waterproof patches, catapult elastic and gaskets.
What to leave alone
Also be careful with: anything with a large mains capacitor, anything with a spring under tension, and anything painted before 1992, which may carry lead paint that must not be sanded or burnt.
Sorting, or it is all wasted
This is the part that decides whether salvage helps or hurts.
- Sort as you strip, not later. Later never comes.
- Jars, tins and labelled boxes. Screw the lid of a jar to the underside of a shelf and the jar hangs beneath it, visible and out of the way.
- Label everything, including what it came off.
- One place for each category, and keep the categories broad enough that you can decide in a second.
- Set a limit and hold it. One box for springs, one for wire, one for fasteners. When the box is full, the worst of it goes. A limit is what turns a hoard back into a store.
- Be ruthless with the carcass. Once the useful parts are out, the rest goes. The carcass is not an asset and it costs you space, dryness and the ability to find things.
Recycle what you cannot use. Metal, in particular, is worth taking to a scrap yard while there is one, and doing that keeps the household tidy enough to keep doing this.