Decluttering Grandma’s cellar

With a new water pipe going into Grandma’s house (aka my mother-in-law), we have started the process of decluttering her cellar.  In many ways for Rachel, I think it is a journey through her childhood.

The oldest part of the house is 18th century, with a front “extension” being added in Victorian times and this included the cellar.  The actual cellar consists of two rooms, plus some curious nooks and crannies thrown in.

When our girls were young, they were quite fascinated by the cellar.  It was almost a different world for them, right underneath the real world.  It was also slightly creepy for them, or a place to explore and fantastic with hide and seek games.

The cellar has had many purposes over the years.  There’s evidence of Rachel’s father using it as a workshop.  It has also had its uses as a wine cellar.  In fact we came across a number of bottles which included a fig wine from the 1976 vintage.  Knowing the fig tree does particularly well in droughts, that must have been a good year.  Last night we had our friends Val and Maya join us for our evening meal.  Rachel added a good slurp of homemade ginger wine (from the 1980s) to the dish, only after having to ask our neighbours for a corkscrew.  We all survived without some terrible poisoning!

We have discovered some rustic pottery, old rusty tools and some military memorabilia.  Gradually we are passing bits and pieces to new good homes, identifying eBay items and throwing some stuff away.  We don’t know if we can repeat Rachel’s previous accomplishment of selling a box of rusty screws to someone who needed them for a period display somewhere.

The challenge seems to be knowing what we have.  I mean we need to understand the difference between rubbish, bric-a-brac and items of some value.  In terms of value, this could either be monetary or intrinsic or sentimental value.  As I said, knowing the difference is a tricky challenge.  The last thing we want to do is throw a valuable antique into the wheelie bin.

Somehow I think Grandma’s cellar is relatively straightforward.  I only have to look inside our own attic and see the real challenge there.  But that’s for another time!