I’ve had some thoughts on things:
- The things we buy,
- The things we keep, and
- The things we throw away.
That’s a lot of things.
Things We Buy
My thinking is partly inspired by shopping for Christmas gifts, and partly because we discovered an antique/junk warehouse. And for the first hour, it was exciting and fascinating, but after a while became a bit depressing. All those family photos of unidentified people, and other treasured possessions being sold off. I confess I did buy a 1947 almanack and a Bunty book.
Plus, we’ve lived here a while so my furniture and bits of my home’s infrastructure need replacing. They’re big things, expensive things, and things that take a lot of research and effort to find.
We’ve been putting them off for a while because it’s too hard to start thinking about them, let alone do the work we need to do to finish them.
Things We Keep
The above clippings intrigued me enough to take pictures off, though not enough to buy. What was it about these newspapers that prompted someone to not only save
- The date?
- The story?
- The cartoon?
Not to mention that while I knew of Chateau Tanunda, I didn’t know it was a real thing. And still in production. And that I used to smoke Craven A.
How funny is that?
As an aside, Smith’s Weekly was a bonafide Australian newspaper, set up in part by the “original” Packer media baron Clyde who died of a heart attack during a Mediterranean cruise. The paper featured BIG name Aussie writers including Henry Lawson, Bartlett Adamson and Kenneth Slessor. Cartoonists included Cecil Hartt, Eric Jolliffe and Virgil Reilly. If you’re interested, you can read the paper online at the National Library of Australia.
Why do any of us keep things that others think are a waste of time?
Things We Throw Away
And so we come to throwing things away, whether that’s donating to charity, recycling or sending to landfill. Particularly the old things I’m replacing…
Along these lines, I recently read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, and Margareta Magnusson’s The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.
Despite their seeming differences, they both focus on creating a home that suits you right now where you are in your life. You don’t cling onto things from the past that don’t serve a present purpose, nor do you stockpile things for a future that might never happen (whether that’s 20 tubes of toothpaste or a ream of carbon paper).
I have still have my mother’s remains and a box of her effects to deal with.
The Sum of Things
The last of my mother’s things fit in a box that used to contain copy paper. I suppose in the scheme of things, that’s not too bad. I think I might be ready to look at them and make some decisions.
But I’m finding myself frustrated by my inability to find the things I’m looking for in the pantry and the fridge. And I now have so many “work” towels that I don’t have enough storage space for them, so they’re stacked on the floor getting in the way.
There’s clearly some space and time that needs to be made to deal with these things. And I find myself keen to have a place that contains just enough for now and no more.
Though I doubt I’ll get rid of too many books.