Tag Archives: declutter

Now it’s really time to declutter

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Stack of books burning

I started clearing my desk yesterday. It is more of an art installation than a usable desk these days, and something has to go. Well, a lot has to go. The ice cream wrapper from two days ago was easy, as  were the notes made on the backs of envelopes, but some things were harder to get rid of. All my poetry notes, for instance. Siegfried Sassoon’s papers were purchased by Cambridge University with the help of a £550,000 grant. I note that they contained financial papers and postcards – I could do that. I still have insurance papers relating to my Vespa and I certainly have postcards. I’m a little light on diaries written in the trenches (still with original mud) and letters from famous writers, but anyone who wants to wave £50 in my direction can have several box loads of my papers. Buyer collects.

I think it might have been Maya Angelou who never threw any notes out in case she needed them later. Unfortunately I can’t find any mention of it to post a link. That might be because it wasn’t her, so don’t quote me on this. I thought I should keep all my notes too, as they may contain something useful. I’ve been back to them looking for inspiration, but I cannot understand half my notes and I can’t read most of my own writing, so it’s a complete waste of time. I have books of poetry and notes that take up room and gather dust, but they are no use at all in creative terms. They will be going out this week.

Moustaches! Why don’t they just grow beards? The kids that is, not Julia. Best to be clear about that.

There are five, or six, or seven, or ten things you should never throw out when decluttering. It all depends on whether the writer of click bait ism being paid by the piece or by the word. It all boils down to this – you shouldn’t throw away important documents. The rest of the stuff, I feel, can go. Would you go back into a burning building to save pictures drawn by your unartistic children, or a collection of half-used ballpoint pens, or a selection of baby teeth? No? Well you can probably do without them.

I have the memories. so I don’t need the photos. When I lose my memories, I won’t be able to identify the people in the photographs anyway. We are, after all, just dust in the wind, and very little will remain of us after we go, apart from the memories of others and our blogs. And even they will eventually depixelate, or whatever old blogs do.

A man with time on his hands and buttons on his camera, is never short of something to do. It’s a bit like monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare, but not as highly evolved.

Yesterday it Rained

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Yes, I read a lot of low-brow books…

It was raining when I woke up yesterday, it stayed raining all day and I’m not sure when it finished. It was the sort of rain that fell without enthusiasm, resulting in a sulky teenager of a day. I didn’t enjoy it. In the afternoon I had a hospital appointment, again. It was quite short, which made it more annoying. It took me longer to travel than I spent with the anaesthetist, and I can see the hospital from my house. I actually waited longer for the appointment (which was twenty minutes late), than I spent in the consultation. And all because the hospital couldn’t be bothered to organise itself to have everything done on one day.

It’s typical NHS – the attitude that we have nothing better to do than travel to and from hospital on their whim.

To make it worse, they had horse racing on TV. It’s a subject I’m not sure about, Great stories, the Sport of Kings, heroism, endeavour and spectacle. Plus rich people playing, animal cruelty, gambling and crime. You can see why Dick Francis was able to become a best seller. My head is now crammed with information about soft going, high knee actions and bloodlines that I really don’t need.

More books

Julia just sent me some pictures of the trip to Niagara Falls with the boys. I’d like to be with the family, though I’m not unhappy on my own. I’m also not bothered about the falls. I’ve seem much nicer waterfalls in England and I didn’t need to risk my health by flying in a metal tube filled with germ-ridden strangers.

And now, I’m off to do things – pharmacy then lunch with my sister. That reminds me – I need to get vaccinated again. I really must remember as there is a time limit on it.

After that I need to do enough to make it look like I’ve been working on decluttering over the two weeks Julia has been away.

And finally . . .                                                                                                                      Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Day in Retrospect

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It’s 16.05. I have booked a blood test, decided which walk-in centre I will go to for my COVID booster and written a blog post. I have caught up with some WP reading, skimmed the news and made lunch. Earlier today I spent two hours in the back room of a shop drinking tea. It’s not an impressive list of activity and I really should have done better. Specifically, I should have sorted more books and started making some lists of things I need to do before moving.

However, I’m now going to run into the kitchen and make it look untidy so Julia thinks I’ve been doing things.

As I wrote that, she rang. It’s as if we are linked by some cosmic bond. I confess to laziness and she picks up on it from miles away, rings, asking if I have been cooking.

“Yes.” I said.

“No you haven’t.”

How does she know that? Can she read my thoughts at a distance? Is she bugging my computer? Or does experience lead her to suspect I have sat here all day and done nothing?

There’s something uncanny about the woman.

Later this week I am going to start selling on eBay. I have a lot of low value rubbish lying around and it will probably be better to sell it than to give it to a charity shop. I will do a test run and see. If it works I will carry on. If it doesn’t, I can change to Plan B.

Plan A – sell it on eBay.

Plan B – don’t sell it on eBay.

There are obviously a few of the finer details that I need to work on, but that will do for a start.

A lot of stuff to sort through . . .

Demarcation, Detritus and Denby

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I woke at 7.00, ascertained that I was on holiday, and went back to sleep until 8.30. I could get used to being retired, if this is what it is like. On the other hand, sleeping in does tend to blur the lines between life and death, and I’d like to preserve that line as I get older.

Maybe all those pensioners who clutter up the blood testing department at City Hospital need to get there at 6.30 to prove they are still alive.

Yesterday we emptied the space under the stairs so the electricians could install a Protective Multiple Earth. No, me neither…

Today we looked at the heap of detritus that had built up and decided to load it straight in the back of the car and deliver it directly to a charity shop.

It wasn’t actually that direct as we went for breakfast at McDonald’s first then picked up a prescription. Then we went to dump the detritus, or donate our surplus kitchen equipment. It definitely depends on your point of view.

After that  we went to a shopping outlet to look for Christmas inspiration, but ended up buying books.

Finally we went for soup at Denby Pottery. We tried to buy pottery but there wasn’t anything we wanted. I had vegetable and fizzy orange soup. The vegetable was deliberate, the fizzy orange was because Julia didn’t think it was important to tell me she’d dropped the bottle on the way to the table.

And that was how we spent our day.

 

A Letter from a Younger Man

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As part of the decluttering process I’ve been finding a lot of paperwork from 20-30 years ago. Most of it lost its importance (if it ever had any) many years ago and has gone either into the bin or into the shredder.
Last night, this included a motivational document I wrote over 25 years ago (while I was still working for someone else). It’s similar to things that I do now, apart from the fact that I no longer appear so convincing.
It set out, in great detail, the number of days I had left before the age of 55 (possible early retirement date), 60 (my realistic early retirement date – remember that Julia’s retirement date was 60 in those days, before they changed the system) and 65, which used to be the statutory retirement date before the government stole two years from my life by changing the default retirement age.
It even had financial targets.
And a note not to waste any of those days.
If I didn’t know how the story ends, I’d thing that the neatly written, well-planned document, marked the beginning of a long and prosperous life for a man who knew what he was doing and became a successful mover and shaker.
Instead, he became me.
Fortunately I’m big-headed enough to believe that being me is reward enough in this life.
I’m happy to say that I’ve lived up to the standards I set myself, even if I did have to lower those standards on a regular basis.
I’ve also reset those standards to include things like children, who are a constant drain on both your hopes and dreams, your fridge and your bank balance.
It’s not that bad, despite my jaundiced tone, just a bit of a shock to see an unexpected glance of myself at the age of 35.

You couldn’t make this up…

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I arrived home last night, parked and did what I believe is known as a double take.

The skip, that has been in the drive for the last few weeks, and which was far from full as we unclutter at the pace of a sleepy snail, had gone.

“What’s happened to the skip?” I asked Julia, who had arrived home slightly before me.

“Nothing, as far as I know.” she said. “Have people been putting things in?”

“Look for yourself.”

She ambled to the door muttering.

“Aaaaaargh!”

It was the heartrending yell of a woman who had been planning to fill a skip on Bank Holiday Monday. Skipless and bereft, she stood on the doorstep wailing and rending and doing whatever thwarted declutterers do…

She had, in case you haven’t guessed, been in a world of her own when she returned home, and had completely missed the fact that a large steel rubbish receptacle had disappeared from the drive.

And that is not the strangest thing.

The skip company, when we finally got hold of them, deny all knowledge of the skip being taken away, which means that we have clearly been the subject of a skip robbery.

It’s an unusual crime, as it’s hardly the same as slipping an unconsidered trifle into your pocket. You need a lorry with the correct lifting gear for one thing. So it’s either been stolen by a rival company, or we’ve hired it off a company staffed by incompetent idiots who have collected it at random. . Julia has been looking at the feedback on their site. Some of the feedback is slightly more forthright than my comments.

It is looking likely that we have hired a skip off a company of incompetent idiots.

Wasted Wednesday

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Had a lie in this morning before dragging myself from bed, fighting with my trousers (second leg only, the first goes well most mornings). and eating breakfast.

Then I lost control of my day as Julia took over, sorting, decluttering, throwing away.

It’s not easy. We’ve just about filled the first skip and haven’t made much impression on the clutter mountain. I also had six bags of clothes in the back of the car, four bags of books and a bag of recycling.

However, when we left the house, the first job of the day was to buy replacement ear rings for Julia, who lost one yesterday. The books went to Age Concern, just along the road from the jeweller.

Then we went to a clean Salvation Army clothing bank. The local one is surrounded by rubbish and broken glass and we’ve stopped using it. After that we went to a supermarket car park with the paper recycling and did some shopping. Pasta bake again tonight.

After that it was Flu Vaccine for two and then home to tidy up.

We ran into some friends we hadn’t seen for a while when we were in the surgery – a sign of getting old I suppose. They are our age, but are grandparents now and have many more health conditions than we do. It sets things in perspective when you realise how ill some people are. When I’ve spoken to a man who takes 20 pills a day my five don’t seem too bad.

Julia is out at a meeting, as I write. She never stops.

I’m going to make tea in a minute.

It doesn’t seem much of a day. No visits, no scones, no bookshops. Pretty pointless really.

The featured picture is a fallen leaf – very haiku. It’s a reminder that I didn’t get my nature walk today.

 

 

The Decluttering Diaries – January Results

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At the beginning of the year I set myself a target of decluttering by stealth – throwing out an item of accumulated detritus each day (by dumping, giving away, recycling or any other means) and getting rid of a book a day. Little by little I hoped to make a noticeable difference without too much stress.

So, the January results are in, and how have I done?

Books

Target: 31 books given away.  Actual: Er…0

I haven’t done too well on the giving away of books. I think I’ll say that I’m confident I can move this along in the next month and bring it back on target.

Clutter

Target: 31 items removed from the house. Actual: 6

I had a good ferret round through a load of old paperwork and threw out the envelopes and other bits I didn’t need to keep.  It felt good to take charge of things, but the feeling soon faded.

I also sorted some bits of useless junk, which went in the bin.

It’s a start, though even I have to admit that it isn’t much of a start. February is going to be an interesting month.

The book picture is a random book picture because I mentioned books in the post. I’ve decided I need some pictures around the blog to brighten it up.

 

Things I Think About in the Car (Part 1)

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Just one trip to the other side of town to take Julia to work has given me more than enough subjects to fill a blog for a week.

One is obviously the morality of taking the car to work when we have a good bus service in Nottingham, and trams that run close to where she wants to be.

Two is the fact that she had four bags with her. Two contain things she is removing from the house. One is phone, sandwiches and such. The fourth is stationery and gym gear. Would she take four bags if she had to use the bus? Discuss.

Three – why do women need a bag to carry the things that go in my pockets? Even in summer I can manage, with a jacket in winter I have a pocket surplus.

Four – decluttering.

Five – decluttering, with special reference to the two bags she has removed today. One only arrived yesterday, the other last Saturday, so my view is that they represent clutter rather than declutter, particularly as most of the Saturday stuff is still here.

Six – the theory of two steps forward and one step back,  and how it applies to our decluttering policy.

Seven – differential decluttering. Her stuff is essential (I am told) but mine is fit for the skip.

Eight – do I need treatment for my obsession with clutter?

Nine – design of roads, junctions, traffic lights, bus lanes, cycle lanes and such stuff.

Ten, with reference to Nine, is all this done to make driving so hard we use buses?

Eleven – what is actually in the bus drivers’ test – bullying, cutting corners, pulling off at short notice, providing cyclists with near death experiences? (This question was asked early in the journey, but asked again as I tried to change lanes with a bus bearing down on me.)

Twelve – should I have bought one of those flats by Trent Bridge when I first moved to Nottingham?

Thirteen – would we have had a family if we had a flat there?

Fourteen – if we had a flat, and a family, and had moved, would we have less clutter?

Fifteen – am I obsessed with clutter?

Sixteen – if I had realised that you only had to do five years in the French Foreign Legion would this have altered my attitude towards parenthood?

That covers the journey to work and the first few hundred yards of the journey back. For the second part, which is just as interesting as the first, please call back in a later.

 

 

 

A Start to Decluttering

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No, not the books!

 

I decided it was time to get rid of some clothes.

There were three shirts that don’t fit. I’d been hanging onto them for years, meaning to get on with the diet. There was also one that, with hindsight, had been an error of judgement. Beige with alternating shiny and matt stripes. I’m not yet ready for two-tone beige.

Two pairs  of trousers. See diet comments above.

Finally I shoved some ten-year-old vests in a bag marked “For Rags”. They are still quite wearable, but as I find myself exposing my underwear to hospital staff more regularly I’ve decided to upgrade.

It was a toss up between that or  cutting them up and composting them (they are 100% cotton so would compost down nicely) but laziness won.

In case you are wondering – yes. Cotton underwear, wool socks and leather/cotton gardening gloves have all gone through my compost bins, never to be seen again.

The theory is that by getting rid of clutter I’m going to have a better life.

 

The picture shows Julia doing the complicated bit at the clothing bank while I  sit in the car. You probably guessed that from the wing mirror.