This afternoon I devoted some time to decluttering. Never did I expect it to be filled with so much anxiety! My question is, “am I alone?” I think you’d better read on….
In the cellar, sitting largely undisturbed for over 25 years is a Rolykit. I hadn’t become acquainted with a Rolykit until a while ago; I had wondered if we could become best friends through finding a place where I could store – and easily fine – different screws, nails, rivets and all kinds of things I’d never heard of.
The Rolykit is a nice idea. You unroll Rolykit to become a long tray of little compartments to display all your bits and pieces ready for use. Unfortunately the catch holding it all together is broken, so it doesn’t stay together when you lift it up. Also you only need one screw out of place and then it becomes impossible to roll up.
And so this afternoon
Today was the day! I found a nice sunny spot in the garden, made myself a cuppa and set about sorting through all the contents to see what I would like to keep or throw away. I should say I treated myself to a little chest of drawers to keep everything in, all nicely sorted and labelled.
There was a huge variety of miscellaneous ironmongery in their. I have sorted out for keeping:
- some drill bits and chuck keys
- brass hinges
- grub screw for some door handles, which Rachel says are impossible to buy nowadays
- brass wood screws of assorted sizes
- a strange looking pipe adapter, possibly imperial to metric
- wooden wedge, handy when fitting a door
- picture frame brackets
- a thread measuring tool (how many ‘turns per inch’)
- variety of washers
- a couple of ancient looking glass fuses, and
- a strange looking electrical connection block which looks very thoughtfully made but alarmingly dangerous. Probably a unique, vital care part for something here?
This was all very well but of course there was a larger pile of stuff destined for the wheelie bin. Lots of rusty nails, odd screw etc and a few things I had no idea what they were for.
The anxiety is that if I unwittingly throw something away, thinking we have no use for it, there’s a high probability we will need an obscure widget next week. This scenario is something I am feeling a little anxious about, although I keep telling myself it’ll be okay. It’s just that I have thrown out some things which I don’t even know what they are!
The big question, am I alone in feeling this way? This is a new feeling for me, normally I enjoy getting rid of clutter that we don’t need, so definitely a new emotion here!
Just order a skip!
I tried that one months ago. Enough said.