Is that my treasure they are throwing out?….

 

Last Saturday, I awoke to the sound of the shed door clanging.  What is going on, I asked myself. When I had plucked up enough energy to actually look out of my door, I saw my son-in-law and my daughter pulling out an endless array of “treasure”, stuff that nobody really wanted but was too good to throw away. 

 

Then the kids joined in, with cries of delight over long forgotten books and toys.   There is something very therapeutic about having a shed cleaning day, even if you don’t actually throw anything away.

 

But I digress.  After a while I joined in the throng, and lo and behold, found some of my things I had thoughtfully mothballed for a rainy day.  An old chair, a dehumidifier that I was never going to use again, kitchen gadgets that had outlived their usefulness.

 

Being old allows me to remember the hard times, when you never threw anything away.    Refrigerators lasted thirty years at least, your stove likewise.  I even still have my original Panasonic microwave, now nearly 40 years old, and it works far better than the revamped models which last around five years, if you are lucky.

 

Having moved three times since I turned seventy, I had thrown away quite a lot of stuff so my treasure hoard wasn’t much. In fact, I couldn’t find anything that warranted being allocated to the “keep heap”.  However, none-the-less, the “keep heap” was continuing to turn from a heap into a mountain, as the family foraged.

As I write, a few things have been given away, some dumped, and a little saved thriftily to be sent to the auction or wherever. 

 

In the end, the shed was cleared out so another pile of stuff could be laid to rest there.

 

The moral of this blog is that when you are oldish, you need less not more. Unclutter your living space,  leaving only the things that you like or use, and if you do buy something new, make sure you throw out something.