Life Laundry 2: The Legend Continues

Back in 2018, I posted about the mammoth task of clearing my parents' house before and after their death At the end of this, I said something about starting to make a clearance of our own house, which had accumulated 25 years' worth of clutter. It didn't help that we had imported the whole of my parents' 700-strong book collection, which my partner was intending to sift through and dispose of. This was not helped at all by his habit of storing old newspapers (for later reading) in the cellar. He'd been doing this since our daughter was born in 1998, and showed little sign that he had ever read any of them. 

In 2012, it had looked like this:

He did, to be fair, make a start on clearance - every fortnight, our blue bin was filled with a few more, but it barely scratched the surface. 

By 2014, it was a bit tidier, but no less full:

The thousand-plus VHS tapes on the shelves were sifted out to landfill (very much not recyclable).

Then came 2020 and lockdown which, although it afforded sorting time, meant it was quite tricky going anywhere to get rid of things in bulk. Mostly, it was a question of moving stuff around and around, taking out a few items each time.

And then, in 2022, P got ill, and died in the November of that year, less than 6 months after a cancer diagnosis. Which left me - grief and adjustment to widowhood aside - with a huge physical problem lurking in the basement. These were a few photos I took in late 2022, before I shut the door on the cellar for a while.

After some months, I ventured down there again - in part because I felt the need to do something constructive with my time (in addition to working full time and taking over the role of primary carer to two disabled adult children), something where I would see a tangible result. After a discussion with the kids, we decided it would be good to re-purpose the space (which is huge - former servant's quarters) as a craft area, as both of them do a lot of sewing, drawing, miniature model-making, etc, which tends to take over the house. P's old VHS shelving would hold all their materials and the addition of some work tables would allow them to work on projects without having to pack everything away. So, in the Spring of 2023, I made a start, and by May I had cleared a lot of the papers/magazines and was in a position to start going through mum and dad's books:

Look. Floor!

At least the piles were now hip-height rather than as tall as me...

Mum and dad's books, still in the same boxes we brought them here in 2016

More floor...

I was even able to reclaim enough floor space to set up a desk so I could catalogue the books and work out what to do with them.

The VHS tapes were long gone, so I could move the books on to the shelving, along with P's (almost) complete set of Sight and Sound magazine from 1991-2022. I really didn't want to simply recycle these, so I put out a few feelers and was able to donate them to Manchester Film & TV School, where a new generation of film lovers can now make use of them. They very kindly sent me a photo of them in their new home, along with a plaque acknowledging the donation. This was quite emotional, as P and I met through Manchester University Film Society.

By July 2023, I'd made sufficient in-roads into the newspaper archive and book collection to start on the other side of the room, which wasn't looking as clever:

Under there somewhere is a drop-leaf table that came with the house 30+ years ago and which housed film magazines, kids primary school art work (they're both now in their 20s), my dad's old printer, two obsolete iMacs and scores of sample CDs from Uncut magazine from the early 2000s. By October, I'd cleared some of it, but in December of that year there was a bit of a hiatus when we ended up offering temporary accommodation to a homeless young person. It is not, I hasten to add, a habitable space, but better than the streets. 

Not much clearance happened in 2024 (apart from the occasional trip to the tip) but in January of this year, I decided to go for a final push. Having recently taken early retirement, I no longer had to squeeze all activity into evenings and weekends which made things much easier. I bought some heavy duty racking on which to put my daughters sewing materials and made a concerted effort to clear the space so it could actually be used. 

There are still some bits to go to the tip, but all the newspapers are now gone, as are all the books (donated where possible) and I now have an almost clear floor area. I have also learned to use the wide-angled lens on my camera phone...

The last major job was to put up the racking and the second work table (cat for scale):

And now, we have a functioning work space, over a decade after we first said "We should do something about the clutter in the cellar." I'm going to get an electrician in to put in some additional power points and better lighting, but it's usable, so I may be able to reclaim the dining room table from my daughter's sewing machine.

I think I may just make myself a cup of tea now.