A Spring clean then.
Leave the diaries.
How often do you like to wash your cutlery? Once it’s dirty? Once a day? How about twice a day?
Note to self: do not leave eggs for breakfast unattended while emptying the clean knives and forks out of the dishwasher into the drawer, then close it!
So yeah. I managed to crack a raw egg into my cutlery drawer over all that I had just cleaned and put away, plus more besides. Happening at far too early as I prepared to leave for an interview after my morning vittles, I somehow managed to get sloppy yolky goodness over my clean shirt. Cue another thing for the wash.
I did discover that my little baby dishwasher Geoff can in fact take all of my cutlery at once, along with my dirty breakfast dishes. The tray does not fit, and so gets rinsed by hand, but at least I know all in that drawer is now clean. And I did not get the job, but breakfast was smashing….
All of that aside, I have been making a concerted effort at the annual Spring cleaning. For someone who lives alone I always wonder at the buildup of dust and dirt, especially into places I do not frequent. My storage room, for example, gathers dust at a surprising pace even when I am not there.
It makes me wonder at houses that are not occupied. When I moved in here it had not had a person inside for a couple of years. Cleaning was easier, with my accumulated stuff not yet out of storage. But there was a different smell to the house, more stale and dusty. A friend said it is our movement keeps the air circulating, else it goes stale.
We are a little like those forest elephants in West Africa, who in their trampling and browsing actually make the forest grow better. The paths they cut through the trees allow the air and birds and insects in, and removing the smaller plants lets the big trees grow more solid and makes way for new growth.
I am taking the opportunity to divest myself of many old items I do not expect to need again, and pruning back unused items. The amount of times I have come across similar things so far, obviously bought over the years forgetting I had them, astonishes me. I found three separate identical utility tools, all still in their original packaging, aside from the one in my tool box. Onward to the local charity shop with them, so.
This also includes old paperwork, with which I need to be more careful. Many no longer of interest but with personal information (like, do I really need my very first electricity bill?) they will need to be gone through and put for shredding. I came across textbooks from college, and even some from secondary school, that are no longer current, and certainly shall not be needed by me. The local amenity centre offers shredding for such tomes, so off they will go.
I remember when my parents were getting ready to move out of the family homestead to a smaller and better appointed house a couple of towns away, nearer the hospital, they had a somewhat similar pruning. Part of this ended up with the Centra earthenware set going to Little Slightly’s mother, and other trinkets going elsewhere.
But what interested me were the boxes of my Dad’s notes from college. Carefully arranged and with perfectly written pages, they chronicled his years in Cork university gaining his qualifications. He chuckled when he saw them, carefully packed into boxes each one labelled for a year, or a course or subject, he commented that he had not looked at any since he packed them, many years before I was born. But he was conflicted about dumping them as they represented so much of his life.
I feel somewhat the same way with some of my items (although not ESB bills, honestly) but in the years before feng shui and the like took hold here there was a feeling that things should be kept for future generations. After all, we read about historians being delighted at reading the shopping lists of manors and demenses of centuries ago, as they gave insight to the lives of the times. Somehow, though, I think they will be less than interested in my phone records and homework books.
But certain ones will remain. My diaries, at least for now, do help in taking me back. My mother gave me the trick of using a standard annual appointments diary, day per page, to just record the highlights of the day. Sometimes in bullet points, they act as an aide memoire. Alongside my work diaries, they help keep people and places alive in my memory. Some entries, though, still baffle me, so I wonder what my great grandkids will think, if ever they read them.
In the meantime I will keep making like a forest elephant, trampling through the undergrowth of my house, acting as a ventilation for the new memories to come, but still allowing the precious ones to remain.
