Picture this, people; at some time in its life, the door to my living room was converted to a sliding one. Fine, no problem. It saves space, for an ordinary opening door requires an arc through which it may swing, whereas a slider is contained in a narrow strip either to the left or right of the doorway.
Still with me? Now I need you to be a little more imaginative, as I attempt to explain the layout of my home a little further. Walk with me down my relatively narrow hallway, with living room facing us at the end. The door slides to the right, and this is where it becomes a little tricky, for at a ninety degree angle to its frame is another, narrower door which allows entry to my under-stairs cupboard. Admittedly, if I choose to open the cupboard door, access to the living room is temporarily impossible, but this isn't a major disadvantage, in the great scheme of things.
The problems begin once you understand just how much accumulated dross I have manged to stow away in this cupboard since I first moved in. Although I have occasionally taken almost everything out, almost everything has been hastily returned at once, theoretically until I have enough time to deal with it properly. You begin to get the picture? I have currently wedged an elephant sized drawing board across the entrance, to stop an avalanche of plastic bags and boxes spreading over my feet, as soon as I open the door. Please note, I am not implying the board is actually the size of a pachyderm, merely that it fits the paper size 'Elephant' by which it would have been known in the days before metrication.
It has provided a stirling service, since I first had the brainwave to use it in this unorthodox manner. The only snag is, there is no such Heath Robinson contraption in place to prevent sideways expansion of my 'stuff'. Unfortunately, this often means it slides like a slag heap, and permanently fixes my sliding, living room door in the open position.
During warm summer days, this is fine, but once winter chills begin creeping around the place, it is quite nice to be able to cocoon one's self in a room with a firmly closed door. At last, we have arrived at the nub of the matter which prompted this post. I removed several plastic bags and contents from the cupboard, in order to keep the heat in my living room by closing that dratted door.
Shall I let you into the secret of the bag contents I dealt with this morning? 99% consisted of paper-based letters awaiting shredding (security minded me!), but I hate to admit, the dates of the bank statements, official correspondence etc., were between 2000 - 2001. I hang my head in shame. In my defence, I only acquired a paper shredder about a year ago, but that is no excuse for having ignored the bag for over eight years. Can any of you admit to such disgraceful, useless hoarding? Probably not...
haha...my mother sure could! I prefer the three year file system, shred away at the beginning of each year ;) fun times ahead for you! big smiles
ReplyDeleteYes I admit to too much paper accumulation everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThe current home once had a similar door dilemma: three doors in a narrow area which would become wedged with each other like many of those wood puzzles you are asked to solve. We replaced one door with a vertical shade which has worked well for several dogs who will go between the slats and exit their own doggy door out to back yard.
Not quite that bad.. no, but a paper shredder sounds like fun! Those documents should have been gone within a couple of days of acquiring it. :)
ReplyDeletePffft. Those papers are all dated in this decade. That's nothing.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Elephant-size paper until now.
Hilary dear, I'd have had to unearthed the bag first, within days of buying the shredder! It's taken the time from then till now, for the 2000-1 papers to rise to the top of the heap! Do you not understand such quirks of fate?! :)
ReplyDeleteUntil I got a shredder, I was just the same. Now I have a better system for bills, etc., and shred each month - or two - or three...
ReplyDeleteOh yes I admit that I am even worse..but I'm not going to talk about it...too shameful.
ReplyDeleteShredders are slow and cumbersome. I found that one cup of bleach, thrown over a bunch of papers in a bucket, after one or two hours later has wiped out all the writing on those papers. NOt a bad idea. Messy, but doable. Now, if only my children would help me with this task, I too could catch up with my papermess.
ReplyDeleteWe are all guilty as charged.
Jinksy, Jinksy, there, there, calm down. Why not take ALL of that stuff into the sitting room and dispose of it there? Then you'll have plenty of room under the stairs for more accumulations of paperwork.
ReplyDeleteBeloved is as bad as you but as he has been told very firmly that all his bits of paper will end up in and around his desk and shelves he has seen the error of his ways. He now bundles them up as tidily as he can and stuffs them into the bottom of his cupboard.
The understairs cubby hole has a loo in it in our house.
Now I am feeling guilty over my over stuffed file cabinet....I have papers in there from 40 years ago I am sure. I keep planning on taking a day and just focus on it but always put it off, sadly the shredder sits idly beside the cabinet, perhaps after reading your post I will finally get to it......:-) Hugs
ReplyDeleteI do hoard but not things to be shredded! I try & do it in batches every now & then.
ReplyDeleteWe have junk drawers and junk cupboards and all that paper that comes from the post box doesn't always get thrown out quickly.
I must do something about it.
We lost our under the stairs dumping ground when we made it into a second loo! But the step ladder is still in there with a towel on the rungs. Well we haven't a garage and where else can I put it?
Nuts in May
Jinksy -- I have statements and bills from 1 years ago. I have pay stubs from 1981! Not all of them -- but enough. I think I better barracade myself behind a door with a shredder too ... good way to kill a cold winter's night!
ReplyDeletefortunately i'm not a hoarder. i tend to be one of those who tosses away and then later wishes they hadn't. but i did once find 3 year of meat in my freezer when i defrosted it....
ReplyDeleteMy husband is a hoarder of the first order ( Oh gosh that rhymes)
ReplyDeleteNow we are planning to downsize to a more manageable sized place.... I have a lot of sorting to do. I have to wait till he is out, so that what his eye doesn't see his little heart won't grieve over.
He has all his business records from 1973!!! cheque stubs and all.
Phew!
Love Granny
no not, we might be quadruplets, but not, alike in this case....i have thrown away the day's paper by 8:32 in the morning, and my wife says why??? and i say well it is an early morning paper and if you haven't read it by early morning then the news is like yeasterday's garbage and should be thrown away.....wrap fish in it if you will, but by all means get it out of the house
ReplyDeleteMy wife saves everything but we have a big basement. I pity my kids when we die.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have several boxes of yarn and craft items store in a little cubby hole off of the garage. My husband keeps saying, you should go through that stuff you don't even know what you have. Right, I don't know and I don't want to know. LOL This sort of clearing out and throwing away is a back killer. So now with cold weather right around the corner, it can wait (again) till Spring. I keep telling the kids, when we both die, and you don't want to clean up the stuff, torch it. LOL Good luck.
ReplyDeletePapers... I used to have a mountain pile of them when I was still a student. Nowadays I leave them all at the office.^^
ReplyDeleteWe have moved house four times in ten years. It is a great way of making sure that you do not hoard too much, but as a means of filing it is a bit drastic.
ReplyDeleteWell, I am generally one to throw out important papers and keep the purely useless. At least you saved stuff that might have some actual bearing on your life. Me, I've got piles of old moldy sporting event programs, concert tickets, sheet music, broken guitar strings, and VCR tapes of shows I wasn't particularly fond of in the first place.
ReplyDeleteLast year I moved from a largish house with a huge attic, a huge basement, a potting shed and a massive carport to a small house with no attic, no basement, no garage. The accumulated junk was appalling. A skip is the only solution. Now I toss everything into the recycling bag immediately, including, apparently, my daughter's passport.
ReplyDeleteI throw out everything. Everything. :)
ReplyDeleteHello Jinksy,
ReplyDeleteAs a business person, we have to keep all our records for six years and everyone has to keep their tax records for at least one year, so you shouldn't feel so bad! The only problem with domestic shredders is they aren't really made to tackle long continuous jobs; short and often is best!
Lucidly explained and all very familiar - I, too, have a collection of ancient bank statements awaiting shredding. Some, I do believe, are on parchment. Nice post. Enjoyable to read.
ReplyDeleteYou certainly can admit to this hoarding malarkey.
ReplyDeleteI have a garage... full of stuff cleared from houses of long-gone relations...