Have you any idea just how powerful attics are?
They have the ability to take control of their owners mind and before you know it, the boxes of unwanted ‘stuff’ destined for the tip have suddenly found themselves placed not so strategically up beside the imposing beams. They are like a huge magnet. Does this sound familiar? It bet it does.
We recently had the joy of opening the attic door, with the first mission to simply gain access. To climb through and enter was no mean feat, I can assure you. But access we did and my goodness me, what we found was quite something.
Let me give you a little flavour. The first thing we stumbled across was five kids’ car seats. Yes, five! We only have two kids and they are now nine and seventeen. Therefore, why do we have so many and, more importantly, why do we still have them? Let’s bin them, was my logical thinking. “Eh, shall we just keep one, you know, just in case.” Ok then, one.
Next up: Our boys full school history. No, correction, their full history from pre-school. What seems like every school book; every report card; photographs, you name it, it was there.
Having memorabilia is lovely, little keepsakes. But surely, we don’t have to retain school books which demonstrate in 2021, our oldest boy knew his six times table. No, we don’t, and I am glad to report we reduced the volume considerably. I felt like I was kind of winning a battle, you know. And it felt good.
Next up, the Christmas tree. If I had my way, we would dispose of it and buy a new ‘real’ one every year; only because of the space it takes. Alas, I lost that battle.
On the topic of Christmas, we have countless boxes of Christmas decorations. I swear, they take up about 72% of the attic capacity. They have multiplied over the years. Add Halloween decorations, dressing up boxes (for the kids, before you have any thoughts. Those days have gone and only the memories remain), we have boxes for every occasion. “They need to stay.” Ok! Another defeat.
Let me be clear, I’m equally responsible. I have a Yamaha keyboard, purchased for me one Christmas – never used. Boxes of medals and trophies from my footballing career; obviously they must stay. A set of golf clubs; I have never played golf. My cricket kit from 2001. It’s like a sports’ shop up there. Bags of cables and wires. If I had come across a Betamax Video Recorder, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Oh, look, a Sodastream!
Why do we have a desire to keep all of this stuff? Is it driven by the ‘just in case’ theory, that one day, we may need five car seats at the same time? Or in the case of the school memorabilia, perhaps we genuinely believe we will sit down one day and reminisce over every school year. Maybe there is an element of that. But something has to give, surely?
I love throwing stuff away; I hate clutter. We finished the big clean-up and it felt magnificent. Really magnificent.
