So doll, I am really trying to simplify my life! Doing a lot of cleaning out at home. It certainly is liberating throwing away "stuff". Remember when DVD players superceded the good old video recorders? Well, we have BOXES of videos. Programmes we recorded from TV. There they sat, cluttering up the bookcase, gathering dust. The video recorder itself gave up the ghost some years ago and ever since has sat quietly on the wall next to the stairs leading up to our bedroom. Why is it there you might ask. Good question.....dear hubby was going to "take it in to be looked at". Well, it has been waiting to be "taken in to be looked at" for probably the past 3 or 4 years. Well, finally, I snapped and I sent him a BBM message "Say farewell to your video recorder. This relationship is OVER! Finished. Klaar. Kaput. The End"....video recorder went out the door and all those video cassettes are now in boxes waiting to be dumped too. Hubby never said a word, I think he feared being booted out the door along with said video recorder. He knows not to get in my way when I am on a mission. (Small snag here though, not sure quite what to do with them. Do I become one of the inconsiderate, uncaring inhabitants of this earth that don't worry about the fact that I am cluttering up the already overloaded planet with yet more waste? That they will sit in some landfill where they will lie for a gazillion years leaching horrible plastic toxins into the soil?) We live in a throw away society - printers last a year if you are lucky and when they pack up your friendly computer guy says airily "Oh we don't bother to repair these, just throw it away and buy a new one, it's cheaper." I have a store room filled with old computer keyboards, mice, printers, cables.......amazing how we make things that are not meant to last, and yet we have not really created a system to get rid of (or recycle) the things we have to throw away. (If you have any suggestions would love to hear them!)
While in the clearing out mood, I noticed I had over 5500 emails in my Inbox. OK, it is our business and personal email address (my own personal email address has 2721 sitting in the Inbox as I write this....). So I resolved that every day I would try and delete a couple of hundred. When I started, I was completely fascinated by the emails I never deleted then. Emails that are only relevant for that time, I mean, a reading for the month of May in 2010 is hardly relevant in March 2012! I merrily hit the delete button time and time again until I became quite giddy, caught up in the joy of releasing a little bit of my computer space from the ties of the past. Of course I got techno-savvy at one point and opened the "Folders" so now I have all these Folders filled with newsletters, quotes etc that I have never had the time to read.... *sigh*.
Watching Downton Abby the other night, I longed for the days when we wrote with beautiful pens on beautiful crisp paper and then trotted off to the Post Office where the shiny red Post Box eagerly accepted our offering. And the excitement of the post arriving with a letter for you. My boyfriend who was in the army back in the 70's when I was a teenager, was stationed up on the Angolan border and returned home with a large bag filled with my letters, which were veritable novels.
Actually, I can blame it all on my Mum - she is a Hoarder Deluxe and her cupboards are a veritable treasure trove of empty ice cream containers, those little plastic balls that go in the washing machine with the liquid and other unknown funny looking plastic thingies.......Well you never know, says she, might come in useful one day.......
Ah yes, hoarding is clearly in my blood but I am slowly releasing myself from the genetic disposition to collect things which have no earthly or heavenly use. Now, back to that Inbox.........
Stay Blessed
Di
