Tidy Sunday

I haven't done much blogging recently, but I have been, and still am, hard at work on the tidying-up front. Recent developments include, but are not limited to, having finally cleared enough space to get back into my bed (well, half of it anyway) and a rather successful clearing-out of a few cupboards.

In fact a cupboard clearance was staged this very afternoon. Kind of a large walk-in closet kind of thing. It's been kind of hard to get to, on account of having all manner of boxes and stuff piled in front of it. It's always been a good place to store things, and knowing that this means that I will have been using it to store lots of useless things which could actually be thrown away now that I'm all "ruthless" and stuff, it seemed like today was a good opportunity to go through it and see what could be tidied.

There was much to tidy. Clothes! Coat hangers! Floppy discs! Paper, everywhere!

My recently-found ruthlessness is now extending to clothes, as I start to make the entirely grown-up and quite reasonable decision that there is very little point in keeping clothes that don't fit me or which I never wear. Before I adopted my current 'black trousers, black t-shirt' look a few years ago, I was quite the demon for coloured shirts - and ties! Oh my yes, I was very partial to a nice shirt and tie. Now don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that I was ever stiff - a white shirt would only ever be accompanied by just about the noisiest tie you could ever imagine, and similarly I had many shirts which made plenty of noise on their own. Tidying up the closet today reunited me with my fashionable old friends.

Some shirts no longer fit me. I'm not exactly slim as it is, and it seems that I may have put on one or two pounds over the last few years. So even though I could still get these shirts on, and in most cases even do up the buttons, the end result was that vaguely "five months pregnant" look which is just so attractive in a man. Several of my favourite shirts became disqualified at this stage, including my pride and joy, one of the loudest, brightest blue shirts I have ever had the pleasure of wearing. I wanted to keep it, just to remember, but no - I must be ruthless.

Several more shirts turned out to still fit, but were of a sedentary colour which I no longer found appealing. A well-fitting but unacceptably brown shirt was discarded for this reason alone. There is no point in keeping clothes which I will never wear.

I also found a very strange looking pair of trainers, and I am not sure where they came from. They seemed unworn, but were very likely to remain that way - and this too rendered them disposable. Actually, and rather helpfully for a clothes tidy-up, the local council has very considerately placed a bright yellow "clothes bank" at the top of my street, which accepts donations of clothes, shoes, and textiles, and all in a good cause, with profits somehow going to the local Air Ambulance charity. So today, I managed to fill that bank up with used clothes and shoes, sure in the knowledge that I was doing good and not "throwing anything away" at all.

I am sure that my high-quality shirts and shoes will be swiftly snapped up by eager charity shop shoppers, and that soon my fashionable clothes will be sported around town by all well-dressed and possibly colour-blind men who share my similar build but are not quite so pregnant as I am. Of course this may be a romantic notion. In actual fact, and for all I know, my carefully-donated clothes may well be shredded and used to make feather dusters. I hope that this is not the case, but what I don't know won't hurt me. The most important thing is that I have a bit more space than I used to!

Shirts are one thing - ties are quite another. I used to love ties, and in fact still do. Generally speaking I was not able to get rid of any of my tie collection, seeing as how they are all completely gorgeous and perfect in each and every way. The colour, pattern, design, and decibel level of each one is perfect, and cannot, must not, ever be removed from me. Although I made three exceptions. Sadly it was necessary to jettison the Tweety Pie tie as it had somehow become ripped, and could only be worn in emergencies. It had shown weakness and therefore had to go, so I discarded it, ruthlessly. Plus, in amongst my collection of entirely perfect ties I found two entirely awful ties which were in fact my school ties. Since I hold no affection for these ties, since I left school 18 years ago, and since it is unlikely that I will ever be required to go to school again, I decided that now was the time to send these to the bin as well.

I also found a carrier bag full of new ties which I had clearly purchased in a mad shopping spree and not had time to unpack. Surveying the shop-fresh ties, I briefly wondered if they would sell on eBay, since "brand new with tags" items do tend to sell well. But the thought lasted only for a second. Any tie which is perfect enough to buy is too perfect ever to sell. I have kept them all, the exceptions that prove the rule that there is no point in keeping things I won't wear. I'm sure I will wear all of these ties again, or for the first time, one day.

All the floppy discs I found will be - at some point - copied off onto the computer and then wiped. Not yet, but later on. And as far as coat hangers go, I will say no more than they are an utter nuisance, and appear to breed while unobserved. I seem to have several hundred and I am not at all sure what to do with them.

That leaves the bulk of today's discovery which is.. paper! Tons and tons of paper. Paper in boxes. Paper in bags. Paper in envelopes, carefully sorted to indicate which pieces of paper I had read, which were important, which were not important, and so on.. Aagh!

I had already located about three boxes of paper for shredding in my earlier (and negligently unblogged) successful raid on the cupboard under the stairs. I was just getting through all that when now, I find nearly twice as much again. My poor little shredder is not going to be able to keep up with this. It already stops every few minutes for a rest - since even the £39.99 Argos Super Duper Shredder is not designed for constant use - and it seems unable to keep up with my high shredding requirements. I entertain thoughts of purchasing another, larger shredder, to let me clear my shredding backlog more quickly - but I remind myself that I will not be doing all this shredding forever, and that once I have patiently made my way through my current surfeit of paper, my current shredder will be perfectly up to the day-to-day use to which it will be put. Even though I could easily buy that £100 Argos Monster Shredder, use it, then sell it later on eBay, it is likely to be large and heavy and difficult to post. So for the moment I will do without. Let's see if I change my mind later.

So today I have indeed been feeling particularly industrious and pleased with myself. Somewhere at the back of my mind I can't help but think that my grand tidying-up effort has not truly started yet, because the stuff you can throw away easily is not the problem - it's what you can't throw away that prevents tidiness. But at least I'm getting somewhere. And even if there is still much more to do, at least I'm doing something..