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When cleaning out your storage room, be ruthless
The Gazette
Thursday, July 17, 2008
As one of our summer chores, my wife and I tackled something we hadn’t dared look at for several years – cleaning out the basement storage room.
I suppose the last time I looked through my boxes of mementos and memorabilia was when we moved from an apartment to our home eight years ago. Even then, it must have only been a cursory glance.
How many of us keep ridiculously unimportant items in random boxes in storage rooms?
These items are stored often only to be uncovered after our passing with hope that, once found, some clue to our self can be gleamed, ingratiating everyone to our history.
In my case, what might be gleamed would be my disorganization skills.
I came across my aptly named Money-builder bank book from 1984 and I was able to quickly spy the $47.28 Mrs. Wilson had given me for, as I scribbled in the information line, lawn.
Thank goodness I documented this as I did. The 28 cents was succinct and my use of descriptors would have surely aided Sherlock Holmes and his Baker Street
Irregulars.
Fortunately, all my bankbooks (up to some random date) were stored for safekeeping in the box. Neatly, I might add.
Grand thinking.
Then I stumbled upon the brilliant smell of my high school, CEGEP and university notes.
The water from the flood, or from our home sweating, had been soaked up in the many pages, giving the entire room a musty, moldy air.
Initially disturbed by the discoloured pages, smudged ink and “something crawled in here and died” smell, my focus shifted. I don’t have an inkling why I kept most of the stuff: Math 314 notes from 1982; a few doodle pads that used to sit beside the phone that had random phone numbers on them; a Rubik’s cube?
The only times I have reacquainted myself with my old notes has been when I moved a box from one area to another in order to reorganize or gain space. Every single time I do this, I am positive I have ditched everything that has no more use to me and am set forever.
And yet, here I am again.
My wife grabbed my old Rubik’s cube to discover my ineptitude and cheating tendencies. It no longer spun as it should because I had pulled it apart too many times in order to win at it, and a few of the stickers were missing.
She then sought and found her own
Rubik’s cube and there went at least half of an hour of our life that we’ll never get back.
She used to know the formula, she told me. It was scribbled down in one of her boxes.
In the next few boxes we found my old video and cassette tapes. Time to ditch Thriller and Sheena Easton – taped (with commercials) on our old Sears VCR – music videos that have the magnetic snake-race lines periodically livening up the crisp images and suspect choreography. There are some early Seinfeld and The Simpsons episodes taped; almost every X-files episode, in strikingly random yet painstakingly documented,order; and dozens of other unlabelled video tapes.
I put all of them into boxes and started to write garage sale on them. For some reason, I believe some people might want most of the things I no longer need. Yes, it used to be white and work properly, but someone might like the new beige and suspect functionality.
My wife calls this stuff garbage.
It seems my reasoning is suspect. My tendency to prefer these major sweep cleaning days more than the do it right the first time approach my wife espouses forces me into a conundrum of sorts.
Her logic is painfully evident as I discover my garage sale pile is located perilously close to the hazardous waste pile. As I’m holding my box of cassettes, I’m not sure which is which.
After the thorough, albeit potentially perplexing trip through memory lane, I have fallen upon some wisdom a friend lent me with regards to storage clean up. Here it is:
After you take an inventory of your stuff, make five piles. The first should be for absolute necessities; the second will have useful items that might come in handy; the third pile should be for stuff with slight purpose; the fourth pile will be items you have used once or twice and the final pile is for junk.
After making the piles, sweep everything except the first pile into the recycling or garbage bins and call it a day.
untley Addie is an English and Journalism teacher at John Rennie High School
kathunt@videotron.ca