Planning is the essence of life, Adam Smith espoused and I have followed him to the tee, much to the chagrin of the family. So clean ups at home do involve careful thought process and organisation. I can see my family wilt from the exercise, but then, I cannot help planning!
I cannot proffer a thesis on how certain thoughts get ingrained, but they do, and come what may, it is inevitable that you think to organise, again to the chagrin of the family!
“A chest?” he is aghast. I have never seen my husband so confounded. I think it is the expense of cleaning up that baffles him and my ingenious explanation of it. It’s really simple. The children are now grown-up; their toys are now cluttering up their room and cupboard. I need to remove them. Yet I cannot throw them away. I would be throwing out memories.
Then there are the old clothes, only the ones that were very significant in certain ways to my daughters in their growing years; some of which need to be kept carefully and passed on to the next of the generation.
Photos are something that is clicked for the very purpose. The albums have frayed; new ones are the need of the hour. We now get lovely embossed ones which compliment the old photos. Then a small little decorative rack to set the albums in and the rack to be placed in the living, just so to pour over the photos on wintry nights, weather permitting.
There are the precious books, those of my children and some from my own childhood; 127 of How & Why Wonder Books, which my girls read in wonderment, carefully preserved until now, they need further care. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is hard bound and still in its very ornate sleeve also needs attention, its antiquity needs to be displayed on a coffee table.
The entire collection of Somerset Maugham, which father bought for me, and numerous other books of which over a hundred, I find have no shelf space in the bookshelf. This means carefully crafted bookshelves, perhaps a couple more to accommodated pieces of history. Thus goes the saga, needless to say the inherited pieces of crockery, cutlery and artifacts... expenses... expenses.
