We have a lot of stuff in our house. A lot of stuff we don’t need, don’t use and if we are honest, we never needed in the first place.
When we lived down south my salary took a large hike, and despite losing my job at Dr. Solomon’s I managed to receive a nice large cheque thanks to a last minute, Christmas Eve, phone call to inform me that our shares had just flipped over to a sellable price (before they were withdrawn from the market to be converted to McAfee, or something, I forget). We were young, enjoying life and now had a large cash fund. So we put it away safely in a bank account and invested it wisely, well that’s what we SHOULD have done.
Instead we burned our way through it, buying all sorts of stuff. Looking back it was probably more symptomatic of the fact that I was losing touch a little, but regardless we had a whale of a time. And yes, we’re still paying for it now, 6 years later, but that’s not what I want to talk about.
Towards the end of our time in Aylesbury and the subsequent move back to Scotland we stacked up a few house moves to rented accomodation. To minimise the hassle, everytime we moved we went through the boxes and boxes of our stuff and ditched what we really didn’t use. Frequently, however, we would be able to find a reason to keep various bits and bobs, things which still clutter our house to this day. We did throw a lot of stuff out (via Oxfam or similar usually) but we also kept a lot of things for the wrong reasons.
So, in a first step towards a complete de-clutter, we are attending a car boot sale on Sunday. We’ve already looked out a lot of odds and sods, and tomorrow night we will be going through our video library. I shudder to think how much money we spent on them, even if most were bought as part of 3 for £ 10 offer. We have an entire bookcase stacked, double depth, with videos. I reckon we’ll take 100 or so with us on Sunday and see how it goes.
Of course, if I’m honest, that list of stuff does include things we’ve received as presents, things that have been gathering dust atop bookshelves, or that have a permanent residence in the loft. None of it holds any sentimental value, and all of was appreciated at the time but tastes and fashions change, leaving these items stuck outside of our “sphere of desirability”. To that end I’ll put out a short plea: Can all family and friends please STAY AWAY from Hamilton on Sunday. You know, just in case… (we have left a window of several years from the date we received a gift so rest assured it’s nothing recent… that doesn’t help though, does it…)
Ohh and the main reason for attending the car boot sale is more to do with a new venture I’ve hinted at here, but more on that later (next week probably).