Those odd plastic packaging they seal products in can be saved and reused as packing materials to fill space in a box. Wadded up newspaper, pages from magazines make good padding. Cardboard boxes, like cereal boxes, can be stored flat and then reassembled as boxes to fill empty spaces and keep fragile stuff from rattling around.

Cardboard boxes flattened and stacked, cheap paperbacks and phone books, get used as backstop materials for pellet gun shooting.

Papers run through a cross-cut shredder make good bedding for pet rodents. Stuffed into an old pillow case they make great filling for a dog bed.

A oddball survivor socks, what he gnomes leave behind, can be stuffed with dried lentils and peas and used as wrist rest in front of the keyboard, gunrests for shooting, no-mar furniture assembly mallet. A pound or two of lintels in a sock, or a couple bars of soap, quickly end encounters when applied firmly to a head without drawing blood.

Sew shut the arm and head holes on an old, faded and pin-holed tee shirt and you have a functional stuff-sack. Takes about a minute on sewing machine. Tie or sew on some lengths of light line and you get a light, cheap, disposable backpack.

The legs of pants make handy stuff sacks, gaiters, camp pillows after a few seconds on the sewing machine.