Is that something I won't be doing in Skyrim?
You can packrat a metric ton of crap in skyrim.
In FO tin cans can be used as weapons or converted to ammo at the bench. In Skyrim, there are items which serve no purpose other than decoration. As far as pack-ratting goes, I find that I only ever carried a melee weapon or two and a bow in Skyrim, but I carried a full arsenal in Fallout, so YMMV. On the other hand, I found my inventory being stacked with lots of useless potions in Skyrim, whereas in FO food/water doesn’t take up as much weight and medicine/drugs take none (or almost none, if playing Hardcore) at all.
In Skyrim, I think your encumberance is raised every time you raise your stamina (which you can do every level), and there is no real hard cap for it. In the earlier FO games, you could only increase carrying capacity via increasing STR and picking the strong back perk.
My opinion: pack-ratting is much more natural in Skyrim.