Stuff
by prudence on 28-May-2011
We've been clearing out...
It all started when Nigel couldn't find his gloves, and I couldn't find my satchel, and we both got thoroughly crabby about how much junk there is in this apartment, and how we can never find anything, etc, etc.
Of course, both items turned up, but by then it was too late. The bit was between our teeth.
It's actually turned out to be a bit sad. Giving away wetsuits, buoyancy aids, and kayaking cagoules implies we think we won't be kayaking again for a while... Same message with the string-fastened, carry-all-on-your-back-for-a-couple-of-days rucksacks... Now the chief requirement for a rucksack is that it locks.
And then there are all the memories... Nigel's grey suit accompanied us out to the southern hemisphere from England. Since then it's been used once -- back in England. So we've finally bidden it goodbye. Same with my drizabone -- you know, one of those capacious waxed overcoats that has a space at the back for you to fit your horse in. It was bought to shelter me and my professional clothing when I had no transport in Palmy apart from my feet. In Melbourne it seems redundant... Ditto the ski gloves we bought when we took the Railway Enthusiasts Society's fabulous Snowball Express to Ohakune (carrot capital of New Zealand), and thence caught the chairlift up to the skifields that flank Mount Ruapehu. Then there are the beach towels that were part of the luggage on many glorious trips to Pacific paradises -- now overtaken by higher-tech micro-fibre towels...
Sigh...
And we've not even been really ruthless. There's still a lot of stuff that has survived to face another day under the "well, it might still come in handy" or the "we'll just keep it until..." clauses.
Then, of course, there are the big heavy photo albums and the big heavy diaries, which really all need to be digitized.
And that's not even to mention the entire wall of books. We have already in our lives got rid of countless books, and in a way I miss all of them (except the ones I actively didn't like). I often find myself wanting to consult one I no longer have ("Where's the book about ... -- oh, I remember, I gave that away"). But aside from that, a book collection is also a kind of Bildungsroman of your life -- a record of the stuff you've been interested in, the stuff you've tried to learn, the stuff you thought you should have been interested in, etc. Ours is now decimated -- yet still far too big for practicality and mobility. Plus, there's a whole big nostalgia thing about books that stops you wanting to get rid of them ("ah, that's the one I happened upon in the second-hand bookshop in Noumea", or "ah, that's the cheese stain from the time I read this in a park in Bern"). You can never replicate this with a Kindle ("ah yes, I was in Lombok when I downloaded this", or "ah, that's the scratch when it fell off the table in China" -- it's hardly the same).
William Morris apparently advised that we should have nothing in our houses that we do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. But I'm really not so sure it's that simple...
It all started when Nigel couldn't find his gloves, and I couldn't find my satchel, and we both got thoroughly crabby about how much junk there is in this apartment, and how we can never find anything, etc, etc.
Of course, both items turned up, but by then it was too late. The bit was between our teeth.
It's actually turned out to be a bit sad. Giving away wetsuits, buoyancy aids, and kayaking cagoules implies we think we won't be kayaking again for a while... Same message with the string-fastened, carry-all-on-your-back-for-a-couple-of-days rucksacks... Now the chief requirement for a rucksack is that it locks.
And then there are all the memories... Nigel's grey suit accompanied us out to the southern hemisphere from England. Since then it's been used once -- back in England. So we've finally bidden it goodbye. Same with my drizabone -- you know, one of those capacious waxed overcoats that has a space at the back for you to fit your horse in. It was bought to shelter me and my professional clothing when I had no transport in Palmy apart from my feet. In Melbourne it seems redundant... Ditto the ski gloves we bought when we took the Railway Enthusiasts Society's fabulous Snowball Express to Ohakune (carrot capital of New Zealand), and thence caught the chairlift up to the skifields that flank Mount Ruapehu. Then there are the beach towels that were part of the luggage on many glorious trips to Pacific paradises -- now overtaken by higher-tech micro-fibre towels...
Sigh...
And we've not even been really ruthless. There's still a lot of stuff that has survived to face another day under the "well, it might still come in handy" or the "we'll just keep it until..." clauses.
Then, of course, there are the big heavy photo albums and the big heavy diaries, which really all need to be digitized.
And that's not even to mention the entire wall of books. We have already in our lives got rid of countless books, and in a way I miss all of them (except the ones I actively didn't like). I often find myself wanting to consult one I no longer have ("Where's the book about ... -- oh, I remember, I gave that away"). But aside from that, a book collection is also a kind of Bildungsroman of your life -- a record of the stuff you've been interested in, the stuff you've tried to learn, the stuff you thought you should have been interested in, etc. Ours is now decimated -- yet still far too big for practicality and mobility. Plus, there's a whole big nostalgia thing about books that stops you wanting to get rid of them ("ah, that's the one I happened upon in the second-hand bookshop in Noumea", or "ah, that's the cheese stain from the time I read this in a park in Bern"). You can never replicate this with a Kindle ("ah yes, I was in Lombok when I downloaded this", or "ah, that's the scratch when it fell off the table in China" -- it's hardly the same).
William Morris apparently advised that we should have nothing in our houses that we do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. But I'm really not so sure it's that simple...