Nothing like a good old seasonal spring clean!
Out with the old and drab, in with the new and fab!

It astounds me how much crap I can accumulate in such a short space of time. Its usually a rather dishevelled and out of sync wardrobe! But in the long term it can amount to a life time of hoarding!

Everytime I get stuck into it I am guaranteed to get rid of an entire black bag of lurkies skulking about in the shadows, hoping no one would spot them and frog march them into the ominous looking plastic prison. All ready to be hoisted into the back of the VW and sent on their merry way, or in a more deserving direction! (Mother gets 1st pickings though- we wouldn't want anything designer getting lost in the ruthless run of things!)

I used to be such a hoarder until about the age of 14, when I realised just how tedious it was to plastic wrap every single collectors mug from Spur! Or pin all of those ridiculous little mighty mouse badges from Steers, onto some horrid looking denim jacket handed down from the 80's - every time we moved - which was often, thanks to dad's itchy feet syndrome!

Something came ovr me one day that made me realise how cleansing it can be to chuck everything away! All the stuff you hoard in boxes and never actually even look at - let alone realise actually still exists once you have shut the lid and packed it away(for good)!

Come to think of it all the shelves at the top of my cupboards - the out of reach one's that I had to get a ladder to get to, were stuffed full of boxes I had lagged around from house to house without having the faintest clue about what was in them! What on earth is the point of that I ask myself now! Because once I had moved out into my own house all of these boxes somehow made there way into my moms cellar! And they have been down there ever since!

The pile gets added to every time I move house, and no longer want some of the newer things I have acquired boxed and shelved.
So after 5 years, plus a life time of hoarding. I decided with much encouragement it was time to get rid of all of it... but in order to do this I had to go through all of it! Yikes!

I've now hoisted all of the cob-webbed dusty boxes out of there and I've been sitting in the garage with them piled around my ears! Its so exciting - I feel like I've discovered the pirates treasure chest! There are things in there I don't even remember having! Some things I actually quite fancy now... and some I cant believe I ever owned, and will deny profusely ever owning - should anyone discover them before they get tossed!

Pictures, and dresses and diaries... "love" letters, birthday cards and perfumes... Ex-boxes: hilarious! Jewellery, crafts, paints, paintings, books, bags... shoes, sticker collections... I even have the entire lion king marble collection with the goon ball... and All of the Dino diaper babies and the kitty and puppy ones... I must have every single set of collectors fad toys for every age group, until I got too cool to collect them anymore ( or admit I collected them anym0re at least!)

I have rosettes from horse riding for dressage, cross country and show jumping. Then there are the artworks from high school and the grammar school books of 1st spelling and sentence structuring. Mom's kept every report from Sub A to matric and all of my certificates.
I have portfolios full of original presentations from college! What do you even do with stuff like that??... knowing how many pain staking hours it took me to do all of it... I even have a three storey model of a language school I designed - complete with coffee shop and all! It all just seems like a life time ago!

So here I sit sifting through what seems like all the tangible life I have lived to date, deciding what should stay and what should go. There comes a time when you need to draw a line with the sentimental side of all of it, close your eyes and just chuck. Because this probably is the last time I will ever go through it, unless of course I start adding to the pile again! Its harder than its sounds though, its my 3 dimensional time line in a sense, if I get rid of it what will I have to show for myself... hmmm... I'll have to develop some sort of scale of importance or something and let mother have the deciding vote.. I'm clearly not being objective enough because I haven't even dented the pile!

OK I'm going to go now! As this is what I like to call P R O C R A S T I N A T I O N of the inevitable!

Post script: When in doubt... stand in front of the mirror and pout! This may take up hours as you could eventually start to look like someone else... resulting in your amusement for a little longer than intended!