Enough Stuff

One day, about three months ago, I awoke one morning and suddenly decided that I needed to get rid of a load of stuff.  Maybe the subconscious weight of all those boxes of crap up in the loft had been sending me telepathic messages in my sleep, but suddenly I felt and overriding urge to purge (most of) the spoils that have come from years of scrounging around op shops, car boots, markets, second hand shops for vintage homewares.   We loaded up the car on Saturday night and set off for a local car boot market in the dark on a Sunday morning.

We thought we were being very clever going early and getting there just before 5am to get set up.  Fools!  Most people had been there since the night before.   We could hardly get a space!  In the inky darkness we erected trestles and unpacked boxes, at which point the vultures descended and I could hardly move for sharp elbowed dealers with headtorches picking over my stuff as soon as it came out of the newspaper.  It was all a bit scary.

The morning rolled on, the sun rose, and a steady flow of people came and relieved me of some of the treasures I've spent years collecting.   Interestingly the real collectible stuff (Tracy Island, 30s kitchen cannisters) did not sell, but odd incidental things did.  Maybe I was asking too much.  Well, I wasn't going to give it away.

Yes, I did have a bit of headache by 10am when it was time to start packing up.  Seems early but after having been there for five hours we'd had a gutfull and were happy to leave.  I made a tidy $450 and learnt the valuable lesson of how much work is involved in getting rid of things, and to try and avoid shopping for leisure.  Now I have to  decide what to do with the leftovers.  Some I'll box up and keep, some will go back to the opshop.

But don't worry, in reality what has been sold is just the tip of the iceberg, and there will always be a healthy spread of kitch krap littering my home.  I really need to do it again, drop some prices and make a real difference.... but the thought of that dawn raid is just too horrendous.

Out the ground

One of the things I love about the world of blog is that there are no rules.  For example, you've not bothered to post for, oooh, five months, but guess what, no one cares!  Few read them anyway!

After a blogging sabattical I can feel a few posts in my waters at the moment.  For those in the know, we have dragged ourselves through the pain and misery of getting phase two of our renovation project off the ground and are now rising from the ashes.  I suspect there will be plenty more pain and misery and financial hardship where that came from, but at least I can bring myself to tap away some reflection and general complaints.  I must be feeling better.   I've promised myself I won't go into detail here, but you can rearrange the words:   council, mean, expense, neighbour, stress, wanker   to get a general idea of where I would have been coming from.

Anyway, fast forward from the demolition of our lean-to kitchen and bathroom, and here we are with a brace of bricklayers in the backyard putting up the walls of our extension. It is lovely to watch. Well, maybe not that view, but the progeress is most pleasing and I may even allow myself to start thinking about frivolous things such as kitchen design and tiles.  And that's waaay before we get to the icing on the cake Kylie!