Tightwad treasures

Here's a question for Yorkers past and present and Yorker wannabes.

Do you now, or have you ever, lived in a home that had one of the following:

- Tinfoil ball
- Drawer full of aging rubber bands
- Graveyard of plastic takeout containers and lids, in which the lids seem to be from an entirely different set of containers
- Jars of drained/separated fat in the fridge

Or, basically, anything else that was saved because "we can use that again" or "we might need that someday" ??

I started thinking about this as I was doing my recent spring cleaning, and a conversation at work about the ever-present tinfoil ball in York County homes made me think even more.

I am a tried-and-true York County penny-pincher. Heck, just read my previous post about free cookbooks and 64-cent tins of muffins.

However.

I do not feel the need to save my tinfoil, my rubber bands, used cooking grease, knickknacks won at the Dover Carnival in 1998, socks without mates or other items of questionable long-term value.

The fact is, I have a job. Should we need tinfoil, I am proud to say that there is almost no time when I couldn't walk into a local grocery store and purchase a roll or two. Ditto rubber bands. I'm almost sure that, at $1.79 a bag at Staples, I could acquire some new ones if needed. You know, ones that wouldn't break at the first stretch because they hadn't been used in three years?

Maybe they're going to come take my "local tightwad" license now, but I just had to clear that up for the record! No tinfoil balls here. (And the plastic container graveyard? Well, Mom and I really are going to tackle that this week. Honest...)

So, 'fess up. What tightwad treasures are you hanging on to?