What is it with people of my father's generation that makes them incapable of throwing anything away? Is it that the war years drilled into them the idea of austerity so thoroughly that they are completely incapable of letting go of anything? Is it that they cannot conceive at all of the idea that something you don't need and never use is just taking up space? Even when they decide to declutter they don't actually do it.
We are considering, at the moment just considering, moving to a smaller house. Partly because of that, and partly because it's a good idea anyway I decided to clear a few things out. I started with a cupboard that was filled with old science fiction magazines. There was a pile of them about seven feet high. I offered them to a friend who is a huge fan of the genre but he didn't want them so it was off to the recycling. Or at least it was a couple of hours later when I had finally finished arguing with my dad who was of the opinion that as I had once paid good money for them then throwing them away now was the equivalent of throwing away that money. Some of these magazines have been gathering dust for more than twenty years and I am NEVER going to read them again. My dad hates science fiction and the chances of him ever reading them are slightly lower than the chances of thirty-five-foot, polka-dot rabbit in a bowler hat and Michael Jackson T-shirt hopping over the fence and eating his carrots.
Eventually though they were loaded into the car and driven off for recycling.
Next up came clothes. He's been on at me for ages to sort out the clothes in my wardrobes. So I did. Clothes that no longer fit went into a pile for the charity shop. Clothes that I wouldn't ever consider wearing again went into the same pile as did a couple of old torn or damaged items. There were shirts, T-shirts, trousers, jackets, jumpers, some sports shorts, scarves, gloves, old socks. All sorts. Everything else went back into the wardrobe. I ended up with a very large black refuse sack full of clothes. I put it into the hall ready to take to the charity shop and went out. When I came back the sack contained only two old T-shirts and a pair of socks. Every other item had been taken out. I questioned him and he responded that if they fit him, he'd have them. Now, he hasn't actually tried any of them on and they almost certainly won't fit him, but nevertheless I can't give them to the charity shop. His wardrobes are already filled to bursting point with clothes so he has folded them up and put them on his dressing table. Every last broken-zippered pair of trousers, every last tiny T-shirt, every last holey sock, hideous scarf and mate-less glove is now in a pile in his bedroom. Decluttering apparently means shifting stuff out of my bedroom and into his. There is ominous talk of buying a new wardrobe to put it in. Two of us live here and between us there are already four chests of drawers, five wardrobes (one double) three large chests and two dressing tables ALL full of clothes. Most of that furniture is in his room where, never mind a cat, there isn't room to swing a gerbil.
I'm going to stop trying to throw things away. It just ends up with more junk in the house. At his rate if we move house we'll have to consider moving into a football stadium instead of the bungalows we had been looking at.
(As an aside, and to demonstrate how far this goes, a couple of years ago I bought a new washing machine. In the outhouse we had not one but two old twin tubs. Both were broken. In one the washing part of it would partially heat the water and then swirl the clothes round a bit before breaking down. In the other the dryer part would spin but leave streaks of rust on the clothes and holes in them where the jagged edges tore at them. He resolutely refused to let me get rid of them on the grounds of "th'other 'n might break, then where'd we be?" One day when my neighbour had space in a skip he'd hired I waited for my Dad to fall asleep in the armchair and got my neighbour to help me throw them in. There was a two hour row with my Dad followed by a week of sulking silence from him. He still has FOUR broken lawn mowers.)
We are considering, at the moment just considering, moving to a smaller house. Partly because of that, and partly because it's a good idea anyway I decided to clear a few things out. I started with a cupboard that was filled with old science fiction magazines. There was a pile of them about seven feet high. I offered them to a friend who is a huge fan of the genre but he didn't want them so it was off to the recycling. Or at least it was a couple of hours later when I had finally finished arguing with my dad who was of the opinion that as I had once paid good money for them then throwing them away now was the equivalent of throwing away that money. Some of these magazines have been gathering dust for more than twenty years and I am NEVER going to read them again. My dad hates science fiction and the chances of him ever reading them are slightly lower than the chances of thirty-five-foot, polka-dot rabbit in a bowler hat and Michael Jackson T-shirt hopping over the fence and eating his carrots.
Eventually though they were loaded into the car and driven off for recycling.
Next up came clothes. He's been on at me for ages to sort out the clothes in my wardrobes. So I did. Clothes that no longer fit went into a pile for the charity shop. Clothes that I wouldn't ever consider wearing again went into the same pile as did a couple of old torn or damaged items. There were shirts, T-shirts, trousers, jackets, jumpers, some sports shorts, scarves, gloves, old socks. All sorts. Everything else went back into the wardrobe. I ended up with a very large black refuse sack full of clothes. I put it into the hall ready to take to the charity shop and went out. When I came back the sack contained only two old T-shirts and a pair of socks. Every other item had been taken out. I questioned him and he responded that if they fit him, he'd have them. Now, he hasn't actually tried any of them on and they almost certainly won't fit him, but nevertheless I can't give them to the charity shop. His wardrobes are already filled to bursting point with clothes so he has folded them up and put them on his dressing table. Every last broken-zippered pair of trousers, every last tiny T-shirt, every last holey sock, hideous scarf and mate-less glove is now in a pile in his bedroom. Decluttering apparently means shifting stuff out of my bedroom and into his. There is ominous talk of buying a new wardrobe to put it in. Two of us live here and between us there are already four chests of drawers, five wardrobes (one double) three large chests and two dressing tables ALL full of clothes. Most of that furniture is in his room where, never mind a cat, there isn't room to swing a gerbil.
I'm going to stop trying to throw things away. It just ends up with more junk in the house. At his rate if we move house we'll have to consider moving into a football stadium instead of the bungalows we had been looking at.
(As an aside, and to demonstrate how far this goes, a couple of years ago I bought a new washing machine. In the outhouse we had not one but two old twin tubs. Both were broken. In one the washing part of it would partially heat the water and then swirl the clothes round a bit before breaking down. In the other the dryer part would spin but leave streaks of rust on the clothes and holes in them where the jagged edges tore at them. He resolutely refused to let me get rid of them on the grounds of "th'other 'n might break, then where'd we be?" One day when my neighbour had space in a skip he'd hired I waited for my Dad to fall asleep in the armchair and got my neighbour to help me throw them in. There was a two hour row with my Dad followed by a week of sulking silence from him. He still has FOUR broken lawn mowers.)
2 comments:
Well, Bob, I'd say you have a serious case pf hoarding here or else your father is suffering from post Depression-era-syndrome, wherein nothing can be replaced to make space for the new because the fear is there will be nothing new. 'And we'll all be ruined.'
My heart goes out to you.
I'm afraid I'm not unlike your father, Bob, although probably not such an extreme case. I've got clothes in wardrobes that I never open that probably go back 30 years or more. Even in the unlikely event that they still were to fit me, they are of course wildly out of fashion.
I don't have any SF magazines, but I do have a collection of hundreds of SF paperback books that I'm never likely to re-read.
Even dafter, I've got about 25 years' worth of computer magazines lying around the place. Some of them go back to the days when CD drives were the coming thing and cost several hundreds of pounds. For most people, a floppy disc was plenty large enough.
I keep telling myself I should start a major clear-out, but never get around to it.
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