I’VE just spent a thoroughly satisfying afternoon stamping on boxes, many boxes – and ramming their flattened remains into the recycling bin, now full to overflowing and not due to be emptied till Thursday week.
I’m in the throes of what’s known in Derry as ‘a good redd out’.
Apart from the benefits of unaccustomed physical exercise, I feel triumphantly cleansed in spirit, yet curiously dispossessed – boxless and bereft.
Boxes are such useful receptacles for keeping important stuff in, but unless you label them, you’ll never identify them thereafter.
Boxes for posting presents abroad, though you’ve rarely one the right size for the gift; boxes for storing impulse-bought electrical goods used twice and relegated to the futility room; boxes for books you’ll never read again but won’t make it to the charity shop.
Oddly, my surplus books are packed in those big cube-shaped garden waste bags with handles.
Too heavy to lift, I need a charity with brawny volunteers and a van.
I wouldn’t describe myself as an obsessive compulsive hoarder, (though possibly you would,) but as a postwar baby-boomer reared by parents inured to frugality and rationing, I was brought up to waste nothing.
Wrapping paper was smoothed and folded, string stored in a National Health Dried Milk tin with a hole punched in the lid and worn sheets were turned sides-to-middle.
If you’ve slept through childhood with a double seam down the middle of your back you appreciate having survived long enough to relish the comfort of a memory-foam mattress.
But to return to boxes. I thought I was a normal sort of person, but I perceive distressing tendencies in myself to keep things for no valid reason other than ‘tired of, but too good to throw out’, or ‘useful in an emergency’, except once a thing’s in a box, out of sight, you forget you have it.
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of the roofspace, long subsumed under an avalanche of other stuff, are four unmarked wooden tea-chests dating from the day we moved into this house 27 years ago.
I’ve no clue to their contents and will probably die wondering. The hoarding rock I perish on is ‘sentimental indulgence’.
Here’s the box of Daughter Dear’s babyhood – her newborn Babygro, her Gingerbread Boy rattle, her first shoes, her first written story in school. “My mummy is fat and goes out a lot.”
Here are boxes of photographs that catalogue our lives together – the Loving Spouse with too much hair, lolling on the bonnet of an MG Midget (a deathtrap on wheels,) me in a beehive and a feather boa hanging off his arm adoringly – all the way down the years to the pair of us side by side, fast asleep on the sofa with our mouths open.
And here, in a box, is the white feather boa, the first gift he ever gave to me. See? I’m getting maudlin now.
I like to keep a few large-ish ‘panic’ boxes in abeyance for domestic emergencies.
You’re familiar with the scenario. The phone rings. “Hello… we’re on our way through Donegal.
Thought we’d call on the off-chance of finding you home. With you in 10 minutes.” Ohgawdohgawdohgawd!
Action Plan: (For more than one person, assign agreed tasks)
A couple of stout boxes will accommodate all the detritus of the average living room – stray items of clothing, shoes, damp washing festooning the radiators, papers, magazines, hobby materials, used coffee mugs, half-eaten packets of biscuits etc.
Sweep all of it randomly into the panic box; hurl box and its contents into the spare room; shut door firmly.
Lift living room ornaments and blow under them. Fresh towels, a glug of Toilet Duck and a squirt of air-freshener in the bathroom and you’re done.
Should guests expect to visit the kitchen, use dishwasher as premier panic box with surplus items concealed in futility room sink under large tray.
When guest depart, empty panic box(es) and leave on standby. Simples!
N.B. You may find the television remote control lodged among the laundry. This advice comes free of charge from a seasoned practitioner.
You’re welcome….
