A Cocktail of Clutter

When the sun shines, which it doesn't seem to have done for a very long time, I notice the dust, and the dirty windows and the clutter. I am something of a hoarder, though nothing like as bad as the people you see now featured in television programmes. I can actually move around my house. I hate the clutter but have to own up that I am largely responsible for it. My parents grew up during the 1930s ( I was a late baby I'd like to point out) and times were hard. This was followed by war time rationing and austerity and I think they never really got over that. That waste not want not attitude was drummed into me. My mum and dad never had a lot, they were very frugal. The problem is that I'm a bit of a bargain hunter combined with having a bit more to spend than they did so mix in the idea that everything should be made useful, nothing should be thrown away and add to that my own green beliefs. It has led to a terrible cocktail of clutter. 

I cannot just throw stuff away, I have to try and recycle it which means piles of things waiting to go somewhere or have something done to them or be transformed in some way into something else that is useful. Now I have returned to my career (combined with still teaching a yoga class or two) means that I have less time to perform these sewing, knitting, rag rugging upcycling tricks so instead we're just left with piles of stuff sitting like disgruntled pensioners in a surgery. They sit alongside bags of things waiting to go to charity shops, to friends, to the dump. It would help if I was a decisive person, but I'm always trying to do what's best for others, and that includes the whole planet. 

What would be best for me would be to place a skip in the garden and put most of the house in it, or buy a new house and leave everything in the old one. All of this clutter gets in the way of my writing. Instead of writing up all these short story ideas, or preparing my first book for a new edition or getting on with a new project, I dither over whether or not I'll every wear this skirt again, or perhaps I could find someone to fix this lamp that hasn't worked for years. 

Getting rid of the rubbish would help me get on with my writing. I could do with that woman who used to do a tv programme where she put the contents of people's houses on their front lawn and made them deal with it. My friend's house is wonderfully clutter free, but that's because her marriage ended and she decided to leave not just the husband but everything, and start again. Bit drastic really, I think I'll just make a trip to the charity shop instead.