I have a bit of a secret. While I am very partial to organisation and “everything in its place”, I can really be a hoarder. I have a hard time throwing things away that often have only moderate sentimental value. My favourite thing is to store things in boxes, forget about them and keep adding to the box. Every so often I look in the box, get overwhelmed by the task of clearing it out and put it back untouched. I’m not proud.
I’ve been in England for 8 years now. I inherited the house Mark had created and gradually have made it ours. A lot of furniture and bits and bobs have gone by the wayside in 8 years. One piece that has always bothered me, however, is the main storage/display unit in our lounge. It is from IKEA but is most definitely NOT one of the pieces I worship from IKEA (*cough EXPEDIT*). Over the years I have been the one to dust it, add and subtract photos, not dust it and generally hate it. Since welcoming Sam into our family I have felt the overwhelming desire to declutter. Maybe it’s ante-natal nesting or anti-nesting but it’s been making me feel ruthless.
The photo above is the storage unit as it was in our lounge. In the 2 glass-door cabinets on top, glasses (both from Mark’s first wedding and our own) as well as a few photos from our wedding. These two cabinets remained largely untouched (and mostly undusted) as they were out of my reach and had doors. And I’m a bit lazy when it comes to dusting. The shelves in the middle and on the sides held books, photo frames, bits, bobs and general dust attractors. The cabinets on the bottom, with the solid doors, held more rubbish and paraphernalia than I care to admit to. But the doors were solid. No one needed to see in. Or dust!
The death warrant for the storage unit came when a skip arrived on our drive last Saturday. We are having our flat roof re-done soon and our currently sieve-like garage was in need of a serious blitz. Mark tackled that over the weekend leaving me with half of a skip to fill. Thus began my plotting. On Wednesday I began the binning of years of stuff. Some of it was spared, most of it was added to the bin. As I kept throwing things out, I was gaining steam. I knew that I wanted to get rid of the whole storage unit. I also knew that I wanted to do it myself.
Yesterday and today was all it took. Shelves where slotted out of place, doors were removed from hinges, screws were unscrewed and much bashing and crashing occurred as each section took its place in the skip. I was temporarily scuppered by the top cabinets but on advice from my neighbour across the road, I got a hammer!
I shimmied the unit around, lowered it onto the floor and then gave it a few good whacks with a hammer. Ooh, that was mildly therapeutic, I tell you! Sam was my dutiful assistant after that, even attempting to unscrew a few screws! Out went the side pieces, out went loads of screws and pegs, out went the cabinets…all except the bottom two with the solid doors. Until we can afford an Expedit television cabinet we do need a bit of storage for Sammy’s toys. Now our room is bigger, lighter, far less dusty and far less cluttered. And I am She-Rah!
