That's the familiar old sound that brown packing tape makes when its comes off the roll. Just got back from my Nanna's place again today to take out the dozen or so boxes that have been stored there for nearly a year. I managed to unpack and sort out 3 tubs and 1 bag to take to Sydney. Its almost all clothes. Its a melancholy experience seeing things inside boxes that have been out of daily use for a long time. Shirts become discoloured, favourite fabrics are now soaked in mothball smell, making them slightly repulsive to hold. I re-called 2 important things:
1 - Its almost impossible to throw clothes out or give things that are still "wearable" away, but once they're disappeared out of sight you don't ever conjure them to mind. If anyone in Argentina asked me the contents of those boxes, I wouldn't have been able to answer except for a few framed postesrs, and a favourite platter maybe. So if you have to cull 2/3 of your stuff.. don't worry, you'll never know its gone.
2 - There's no point putting things away for best. They go out of fashion. I could already see some of my stuff packed away in a box for another 20 years to become a teenage girl's discovery, being cleaned up and worn as "retro". Possibly they will already be retro next week, when I'm back in Sydney.
3 comments:
Girl, I hear you...
1 - Its almost impossible to throw clothes out or give things that are still "wearable" away I put them in bags and hide them under the bed, and if I haven't missed them in 6 months, I get rid of them. I've been doing that for 3 years now and no item has yet been resucitated after its stint under the bed, which probably means I have too many clothes
2 - There's no point putting things away for best. Either they go out of fashion or you put on / lose weight and they don't fit any more. My best suit still fits damnnit but it has a high waist (we're talking Nanna-rise here) and pleats and pegged ankles. The jacket is still wearable but the pants are gruesome - the more so because my bum's now bigger than in 1999 and I *need* the extra space those pleats provide.
If you saw what my folks stored in their ceiling and spare wardrobes you'd be culling like mad, regularly. I imagine myself having to sort through it all when they finally pass away (hopefully in many many years...), and plead with them to do something about it, but they rarely do.
Oh lord yes. When my grandmother died, she had a 4 bedroom queenslander stacked to the rafters with... stuff. Every issue of New Idea ever published, for example. Boxes of easter egg wrappers.
Under the house was also jammed with stuff. At one point, my father realised that a stack of boxes was the only thing holding up the floor above.
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