I was so struck by Badger's accounts of hoarding and pack-rat-like activities. ( I am sorry not to do linking but I am terrified to fiddle with site in case the disappearing posts thing starts again).
I am an awful warning of the expanding space leading to expanding piles of old newspapers scenario.

I too have that motherly feeling about practically any object however small and dirty it may be. I always think sadly about the time when it was fresh and new and loved as it fell out of the cereal packet. There is a bit in ycnaN drofttiM's 'The tiusruP of Love' where the children can invariably reduce their sister to tears by chanting a rhyme about a matchstick. 'Oh little houseless match. It has no roof, no thatch...'. That works for me as well. There is no way in the world I can ever throw out anything with a face. Those eyes......... staring up as you finally tie the top of the rubbish bag. 'Toy Story' was disastrous, it confirmed my worst fears.

Our old house in Norfolk unfortunately not only had a vast, boarded attic but also a range of dry barns. I therefore kept - everything. I have constantly tried to fathom why something seems dull and unimportant in the present but as soon as it has moved into the past it takes on some romantic, nostalgic aura. Why would I be incapable of throwing away a pair of smelly child's trainers now three sizes too small? Why would I put them into a plastic bag in the attic 'For now'? Why have I kept not only every single child's school book since they were babies but their TEXTBOOKS too. 'Face it, Mother. No one is going to go through the 'Pirate' reading scheme ever again. They were f@cking boring AND didn't teach us to read'.

I have kept practically all the 'nicer' clothes the children have worn since they were little as well as all of my own. And worse, when my mother died my father appeared with his car filled with bags of all HER clothes which he couldn't bear to give away - and then nor could I. When the children went to boarding school they collected piles of stuff to decorate their rooms , redundant when they returned and now here. The same when the girls went to college except there were piles more of it - like two flats worth. I also keep glossy magazines of which I buy millions. A friend of mine, who didn't even have a very big house, had something called 'The Magazine Room' where she threw them when read, as she felt that they would somehow come in useful,(perhaps for a 'decoupage' screen), or she might want to look through them again. When she moved she made someone else clear it out as she couldn't bear the loss and they filled an entire builder's skip.

When we left Norfolk I did a certain amount of sorting but it was agony. Finally I just emptied drawers randomly into black bags and a massive van brought them here. Everyone was so bored with unloading that they were tossed into the nearest barn with various oddments like strangely shaped Victorian baths, an entire heavy iron spiral staircase in pieces, a broken weather vane, an unplayable piano, (the insides ravaged by mice), and smuggled old magazines concealed in brown packing boxes. This barn quickly proved to have a defective roof but I kept the doors closed and didn't look.

When the house roof was renewed two years later I insisted that they board over the attics and since then I have managed to fill up the entire space with ancient hamster cages, boxes of old Christmas cards and, spookily, a whole room full of tied up bags of clothes. I also have two bedrooms and a landing piled with more recent stuff and this is not mentioning many hundreds of books heaped everywhere. We also have a flat in London crammed similarly. We were looking at photographs of some ancient school production of The W........ of Oz with my son as a flying monkey. 'That was rather a good costume', someone said 'I know', I replied, 'That must be why it is still hanging up in my bedroom'.

As I am phsically and mentally incapable of throwing anything away I think I have found the answer. Slow composting. Most things in the damp old barn are rotting gently away and as the rats have colonised the attics a certain shredding process is probably dealing with the softer material. And as long as I don't look I am kept perfectly happy.
- posted by Iris @ 1/27/2004 10:56:00 AM comment