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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

What really important things have you thrown away with the rubbish?

123 replies

Meadowflowers · 30/12/2017 15:13

I am actually a complete idiot. This week I've managed to bin 3 iTunes vouchers to the value of £75 and my marriage certificate! I've been putting so much rubbish out and I think I binned them by accident with everything else. I'm so angry at myself. What stupid things have you all done like this? I just need to know I'm not alone in my idiocy!

OP posts:
GuinefortGrey · 30/12/2017 18:57

When I was 14 I went on a school trip to Italy. I spent virtually all my saved-up pocket money buying a necklace for my mum. On the horrendously long return coach journey we stopped in a lay-by somewhere outside Dover and were encouraged to clear all our rubbish into the public bins. I managed to throw my mum's necklace away along with all my sweetie wrappers. I didn't realise until I got home and was so excited to give
mum her present. When I couldn't find it in my bag I realised what I must have done. I was utterly distraught, to the point that my lovely grandparents, who lived in Kent, offered to go and scour every public bin within several miles of Dover! Luckily I realised it would be a hopeless task before they actually undertook their mission. Still makes me very sad to think of it though!

Rainbowmother · 30/12/2017 19:01

I asked a friend to help me tidy up some wrapping paper on my bday when my alcoholic ex had stormed off and atmosphere was awful.

We were rushing as I had decided I was going to throw him out and she bunches up and binned an envelope of all my birthday money. I was broke at the time and had asked for cash from my family. They didn't really have it to spare either so.... urgh!

The whole weekend was awful!

Original poster
Meadowflowers · 30/12/2017 19:32

MrsGrindah how on earth did you manage that and what did you do for Xmas?

OP posts:
HildaZelda · 30/12/2017 19:59

Not me, but my FIL lost his wedding ring a few years ago and was in a terrible state over it. PIL's house was searched from top to bottom and it eventually turned up in the recycling bin.
Oh and my uncle was emptying out rubbish from his pockets a few years ago in front of his open fire. Had a receipt from Tesco and a £50 note. Put the receipt back into his pocket and threw the £50 into the fire! Realised his mistake straight away, but the money was gone in seconds.

MrsGrindah · 30/12/2017 20:09

I had wrapped all the presents and put them in black bin bags in the spare room. Unfortunately we had also redecorated the spare room and put all the old paper in black bin bags too.....then went to the tip. Fortunately I realised that night and went to the tip first thing next day. The blokes there were highly amused and let us sort through the big skips till we found them. I had to wash and rewrap them all!

JanQuadrantVincent · 30/12/2017 20:14

@BillyWilliamTheThird and @MassDebate did you know the person who purchased the vouchers can access then through their Amazon account if bought online. I think it goes back as far as 2 years but maybe more. Hope that helps!

edwinbear · 30/12/2017 20:15

DH threw away the receipt for a bottle of wine once (perfectly normal) there was a competition on the wine to win a wine cellar worth £2,500 which he entered.

Sometime later I took a telephone call telling us he'd actually won it and could he produce the receipt. We obviously didn't still have it, but contacted the wonderful people at Waitrose who were able to provide us with a duplicate!

IndianaMoleWoman · 30/12/2017 20:20

Receipt for a bottle of vodka. There was a competition on the bottle, you had to enter the code into the website. We win a holiday and spending money, but needed proof of purchase to claim the prize! We ran out and bought another bottle pronto.

IndianaMoleWoman · 30/12/2017 20:20

*won

Clawdy · 30/12/2017 20:21

A lovely hand carved nativity set bought for us by my MIL, who lived in America. DH put it in its box, along with boxes of rubbish destined for the tip after Christmas. Still miss it now.

5BlueHydrangea · 30/12/2017 20:26

A pair of walking shoes. Dh put them in the paper recycling bin to dry off. They ended up having more paper put on top then went out with the rubbish! They were his favourites too. V annoying.

MrsHarveySpecterV · 30/12/2017 20:32

£700 I had just withdrawn for our holiday spending money!

rememberthetime · 30/12/2017 20:37

£10,000 in £100 bills delivered from the bank at work. Huge investigation, entire premises searched, audit - money never found. It has to have gone in the bin with the money wrappers and plastic bags from the rest of the delivered cash...

Someone lost their job over it... I had a final warning.

EnglishRose13 · 30/12/2017 20:56

My friend got a bracelet (cost £90) for her birthday which broke so she packed it back up to take it back for a replacement.

Her partner binned it, thinking she was just trying to keep the pretty packaging.

RhodaBorrocks · 30/12/2017 21:20

My birth certificate. I only found out when I needed to get DS a passport a month later.

It actually worked out for the best though - I previously only had the short form birth certificate (I was registered in hospital pretty swiftly as I was premature and the registrars came to the hospital back then for the scbu babies) but I needed a full one anyway to send off for DS' application. My original birth certificate was handwritten and only had the barest minimum info on it - I was always questioned on it as people thought it was fake. Now I have a much more acceptable one! I wish I still had it, just as a novelty though.

DS recently put £20 through the washing machine. He's only 10 so was devastated as it was a big sum for him. I managed to fish it out of the filter and dry it over the radiator. If it had been a £10 or £5 note we wouldn't have had any worries! He later gave it to me so I could buy something off Amazon for him. The John Lewis cafe accepted it quite happily for mine and DM's afternoon tea, so I guess apart from it being a bit crispy, it was still in good enough condition!

JonnaSilvie · 30/12/2017 22:16

My God, I feel ill just reading all these stories. All my sympathies to the people who've lost precious or expensive things, I'm so sorry that you've had to go through that.

I'm one of those irritating "A place for everything and everything in its place" dicks, along with being a compulsive "checker", so I drive my husband mad by not allowing any clutter or mess to accumulate, but it does mean that, thankfully, I've yet to lose anything important (yet).

Husband will lose something important one day soon, though. He leaves his wedding ring all over the place because he can't wear it at work. Doesn't check his pockets before putting things in the laundry hamper (and it's not my job to check his stuff).

He nearly lost our marriage certificate at the bloody wedding reception. Slung it in his suit jacket pocket at the church, threw his jacket off at the reception, and my dad found it under a chair when we were clearing up the party the next morning.

0hCrepe · 30/12/2017 22:25

I don’t know who scooped it up but I retrieved dd’s Book token from the bin a couple of days ago. Then when we went to spend them I caught up with them after being in another shop and spotted a token on the ground near the shop. I picked it up in case it was hers, if not I’d have handed it in. It was hers- so saved twice! We didn’t leave the shop till she’d spent the thing!

wellthatslife · 30/12/2017 22:51

terrible for losing things, can't find my o&a level certs(probably got lost between my dms remarridges and house moves)
have dropped my house keys down a drain
through my daughters asthma meds out and had to get an emergency supply.

My birth.certificate is in a very safe place as I have a statutory declaration of a name change with it due to being known by my stepfathers surname since I was about 4. If I lost I would have to get another one drawn up(complicated by ajother name change due to marriage) as otherwise K would have no connection to my birth name. I do have a couple of certified copies put away just in case

JAMMFYesPlease · 30/12/2017 23:21

Tickets to the commonwealth games a few years ago. Just this month my glasses! At least that's the only place they could have gone and the trash is down the shoot now.

Singlebutmarried · 30/12/2017 23:22

Guns n roses tickets

Gold fucking circle

Only waited 25 years to see then

ermagerdsnur · 30/12/2017 23:24

My local tip has a kind of raised one way system, as I was throwing things from the boot of my car into a huge skip I had my car keys in my hand. Yep, you guessed it, let go and into the skip went my keys.

One of the men had to climb into it down a ladder and hunt for my keys while everyone else had to sit behind me and wait because my car was blocking the one way system Confused

BewareOfTheToddler · 30/12/2017 23:32

DS's birth certificate. Both copied. Ordered immediately after registration when it's cheaper. The only reasonable explanation is that they vanished into the recycling pile. Very unusual for me to lose stuff like that umbrellas on the Tube are an entirely different matter and I still haven't got round to ordering replacements. He's 2 now Blush

Pandoraslastchance · 30/12/2017 23:34

Not me but a colleague of mine recycled her skills book. During our nurse training you to get skills signed off over the 3 years and the skills book was a4 in size and thick. Some of the skills were bloody hard to get and she was just about to hand her final portfolio in for marking to pass the course when she discovered the whole skills book was missing. She legged it back to her house and turned it upside down looking for it.

Luckily uni gave her a a week to get a new one completed but she had to spend ages trawling through the off duty at the hospital tracking down nurses to get things signed off.

Idontevencareanymore · 30/12/2017 23:45

I've chucked away 2 bank cards on 2 different occasions, both at work and absentmindly chucking my lunch debris along with the card.
I'm pretty sure I've chucked both mine and husbands passports away. We've searched high and low and just can't find them. We've got our old ones though......

Just this evening my phone nearly went into the bin again with my dinner cartons at work. I'm just a bubble of absent mindedness

Capelin · 30/12/2017 23:49

I found my purse in the bin when DS was going through a ‘posting’ phase.