I sit here in England, slightly despairing, surrounded by disparate, huge piles of Stuff.
Yet another day of trying to decide what does and (brutally) what does not make the cut. The final cull. The last winnowing out of a lifetime.
The decisions are clinical and often painful — which childhood memories will be packed for India, and which, sadly, will end up on the "To Go To Charity Shop" pile, or "For the neighbours" stack or, saddest of all, on the totally unwanted "To go to the rubbish skip."
And as I do all this sorting and sifting, I have made a vow to my own two children. Slightly altering the words of the Edwardian era hymn, "I vow to thee, my children, that I will not leave So Much Stuff behind."
Even though I live in India, a country which has a disproportionate number of desperately poor people, everyone I know certainly has Too Much Stuff.
Hey! Don't get offended. Just think about it.
We all have books and ornaments and framed photos and china and daily crockery and party crockery and winter clothes and summer clothes and shawls and guest towels and old videotapes that we are keeping just because one day we might convert them to digital format…ah ha! Got you there, didn't I?
I am the first to admit it, that we are fully 100% guilty as charged, hubby and I. Too Much Stuff.
We have old LPs that we are keeping well, because they are old LPs, and you can't honestly throw away old LPs now, can you? One day, they might be valuable and the children will thank us.
We have audio cassettes by the drawerful, because they are, well, old cassettes that we bought when we were students and so, well, yes, let's keep them. Memories, you know. Plus, of course, the children might like them one day.
We have shelves full of lovingly filmed video tapes of our children. All of which we will convert and edit to digital format. One day. When we're retired.
Oh heck, we ARE retired.
What has boggled my mind here in England, as we sift and cull and throw, is that it is increasingly difficult to get rid of stuff. There are rules as to what you can and cannot throw away in the municipal skip. You need a permit to throw things in said skip. A permit to get rid of rubbish. Just think about that. There are people manning the skips — huge vats labeled wood/paper/plastic/oh goodness knows what else — and you are curtly ordered not to put the bin bag full of old photos in the same skip. Old photos in one. Plastic in another.
You have to pay some charities to come and take away the stuff you are giving them for free.