Attic Clearout
After living in one place for a long time the things that you accumulate, save, store and put away “just in case” grows to such an amount that it seems to engulf and threaten your life crashing through the ceiling as if the attic can take no more.
Most ‘stuff’ has little or no emotional attachment and are just things that we have discarded but are not worn out, just outmoded as our life changes and new things replace them. These are supposedly easy to get rid of – a waste but still cluttering up space. How to get rid of stuff in this category should be easy, just go and do it – simples.
Some items to be dumped do have some memories attached or equally some small value, perhaps a member of our family would like it. So the item has to judged against the time and effort to ask around. One way would be to compile a list of the attics contents and circulate to the family, this brings the realisation that perhaps they also have a similar pile of items in their attics awaiting ‘good homes’.
Charity shops are another place to get rid of things – I regularly pass a shop which is full of furnishing and fitting that people have ‘donated’, they seem to be doing a thriving trade so the market is there. And it is for a good cause. Even so I am sure that they can also be inundated with ‘stuff’ that people like me are trying to dispose of.
The things with the very personal memories – cards, books, toys, gifts, photos and memorabilia which have only value to us are hard to just throw away. The items most likely to have the strongest attachments are our the children’s old toys and books – even thought they may battered, broken and dog-eared. Spilling out of boxes, drawers and cupboards each with specific or particular memories of happy times gone by. Another memory treasure trove are the scrapbooks and photo albums that Iris has stored, each one lovingly composed – with family photos, tickets and ephemera gathered from places visited, trapping a family time capsule. Of little value, but priceless to us. They too will be gathering dust waiting for a generation without emotional hooks to fill a skip outside the front door.
The question is should we gather all these things ourselves and have some kind of emotional and cathartic bonfire so that we can move on? Not leaving the detritus of our lives for others to clean up. I remember how my mother sorted things out and returned them to those how gave them in the first place, I am not sure we could do that, time and place rules it out.
We do have some items belonging to the boys, allegedly stored, for collection at some time. We are always being promised that ‘one week’ they would come down and take it all away (probably to be stored in their attic). When or whether it will happen we are not sure, but we do hope it will be soon.
Having written all this down has not helped in the task but does allow me to clear out the cluttered thoughts before starting on the task. I am not sure that if we did have this clear out it would mean that we could move on – perhaps we should as the house and garden are realistically to big for our needs. Saying that, what and where would or could we move to?
Perhaps I might write down my thoughts on that.