The perils of hoarding
This week I have been mostly guddling around in the loft trying to fit flooring throughout. It's a dark and lonely job, but somebody's got to do it.
The problem is there's too much stuff up there. I'm a hoarder, always have been, so I've got four boxes full of computer bits that were out of date in the late nineties; hundreds of floppy discs with random programs and other shite on them, even though my current PC doesn't even have a floppy disc drive; odd cables that I probably can't even remember what they came off.
And then there's Barbara's stuff. Box upon box of lever arch folders stuffed with lecture notes, handouts, assignments and other assorted guff from fourteen years of university education. But she finally gave up the life of a student when she got her PhD in 2000, so why are we keeping first-year biology essays?
We seem to acquire luggage with alarming ease. There's enough bags up there to cater for the most elaborate of trips, and yet most of them have broken straps, zips that don't or holes in awkward places.
The last place I worked before moving to Wales was a data warehouse in Edinburgh. During the course of several weeks I liberated about a hundred good quality cardboard storage boxes, designed to hold box-files and the like. They were great for moving, except that six years on a lot of them are still full of the rubbish they came down here with. Those that I have emptied flat-pack nicely, but they still take up a lot of space.
I'm also one of those people who always keeps the box when they buy something, which means that the loft is also a scary reminder of my dreadful acquisitive ways. But worst of all is my collection of comics.
I started reading comics as a kid. My mother used to buy me Look and Learn magazine and the only thing I ever read was the Trigan Empire strip. I graduated onto 2000AD magazine in 1977 when it launched, and then discovered American comics in 1980, when I picked up a copy of the New Teen Titans in Waterloo Station. I've been reading them ever since, and almost every one I've ever bought is in one of about twenty-four boxes in the loft.
So it's taken a week to do a job that should have taken a day, because I've had to shuffle things around, carefully balanced across rafters, in order to fit the new flooring. Now it is done, I can actually move things in a sensible way, get to boxes and find out what's in them, and try to make a decision about what to do with them.
About eight years worth of New Scientist is already waiting at the front door to go to the recycling station in Devil's Bridge. I suspect that there will be a bonfire of the old lecture notes sometime soon, and I can cull the empty box collection quite ruthlessly. Only the comics remain as a conundrum.
Should I keep them, unread and collecting dust, slowly added to as each month brings a new parcel from my dealer? Or should I try and sell them?
The problem is there's too much stuff up there. I'm a hoarder, always have been, so I've got four boxes full of computer bits that were out of date in the late nineties; hundreds of floppy discs with random programs and other shite on them, even though my current PC doesn't even have a floppy disc drive; odd cables that I probably can't even remember what they came off.
And then there's Barbara's stuff. Box upon box of lever arch folders stuffed with lecture notes, handouts, assignments and other assorted guff from fourteen years of university education. But she finally gave up the life of a student when she got her PhD in 2000, so why are we keeping first-year biology essays?
We seem to acquire luggage with alarming ease. There's enough bags up there to cater for the most elaborate of trips, and yet most of them have broken straps, zips that don't or holes in awkward places.
The last place I worked before moving to Wales was a data warehouse in Edinburgh. During the course of several weeks I liberated about a hundred good quality cardboard storage boxes, designed to hold box-files and the like. They were great for moving, except that six years on a lot of them are still full of the rubbish they came down here with. Those that I have emptied flat-pack nicely, but they still take up a lot of space.
I'm also one of those people who always keeps the box when they buy something, which means that the loft is also a scary reminder of my dreadful acquisitive ways. But worst of all is my collection of comics.
I started reading comics as a kid. My mother used to buy me Look and Learn magazine and the only thing I ever read was the Trigan Empire strip. I graduated onto 2000AD magazine in 1977 when it launched, and then discovered American comics in 1980, when I picked up a copy of the New Teen Titans in Waterloo Station. I've been reading them ever since, and almost every one I've ever bought is in one of about twenty-four boxes in the loft.
So it's taken a week to do a job that should have taken a day, because I've had to shuffle things around, carefully balanced across rafters, in order to fit the new flooring. Now it is done, I can actually move things in a sensible way, get to boxes and find out what's in them, and try to make a decision about what to do with them.
About eight years worth of New Scientist is already waiting at the front door to go to the recycling station in Devil's Bridge. I suspect that there will be a bonfire of the old lecture notes sometime soon, and I can cull the empty box collection quite ruthlessly. Only the comics remain as a conundrum.
Should I keep them, unread and collecting dust, slowly added to as each month brings a new parcel from my dealer? Or should I try and sell them?
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