K.S.G.D.

My life is compartmentalised at present. I've been sorting out everything that has made up our lives over the last few decades into categories. Keep - the things we will put in storage, maintain or put on hold. Sell - things we don't need over the next few years and that will depreciate in value or be superseded by new technology. Give away - things that are useful to others but are hard to sell for whatever reason. Dump - things that a few years ago would have been treasures to others but nowadays you can't even give them away.

It's the D category that distresses me the most. I guess I have old fashioned values but I detest the throwaway society we have today. The Old Girl's son, when he was in his early 20's was given a sum of money from his grandmother to buy a car. He bought a reasonably sensible one for about $4000 which he used to go to work (he was manager of a high profile retail liquor store). One day when we visited him at his flat we noticed that the car wasn't there and that he said he was walking to work. It turned out that the car had broken down and he left it on the side of the road. He left it on the side of the road. He made no arrangements to collect it or to have it repaired. He was of the view that the council or someone would sort it out. I was incensed but there was nothing we could do about it. The car was his (bought with his grandmother's money) and it had since been removed. When I had my first cars I had to bloody save up for them, pay cash and fix the bloody things myself when they broke down.
I hate it when (to me) reasonably new toasters, electric jugs, microwave ovens, radios, clocks and TV's 'break down' and have to be junked. They can't be fixed as, in their manufacture, fixing them was never considered an option. It is planned obsolescence. What a bloody waste of resources.

As a kid I used to fossick in the rubbish tip. See here:

A GOOD TIP

I don't see myself as a hoarder (well, not the type you see on TV) but I find it hard to part with things that have memories attached to them. It may well be that the little storage shed we have planned may well be something larger.