I was brought up hearing that phrase a lot. Waste not, want not. My grandmother was very frugal. She washed baggies and reused them. And the things you can do with a coffee tin of bacon fat... Well, you don't want to know.

So it actually pains me when I have to throw something away that is still serviceable. For instance, I bought a new iPod shuffle last week. The shuffle comes in this very nice packaging. It looks actually expensive to produce -- a few dollars of packaging.

Waste not, want not.

So of course, I kept the packaging. It's been sitting on my desk for over a week. I finally just threw it away, but it was hard to do.

I can't even imagine what I'd need the packaging for. I suppose there's a vague chance that the iPod will break and I'll want the packaging so I can return it. But I suspect Apple would take care of me, with or without the packaging.

But every time I looked at it, I thought, "This could be used again to sell another iPod." Yeah, because Apple has a program to recycle their old plastic boxes. Right.

it's in the trash. With any luck and determination, I won't fish it back out, thinking there must be some use for that plastic box.