More declutter experience

I spent the back end of yesterday afternoon clearing things, and as you would expect it took substantially longer than I'd envisaged. We keep too much... of everything. I'd picked three areas - yes a bit random, but that's the way my brain is fitted. Magazines, a drawer and the side of the bench. The magazines mount up - RMs, CMs and the occasional purchase of BRM and Model Rail. The ads I don't want and there is often only one article that I want to keep, so these are sliced up, the to-be-kept bits put into clear file pockets and ring binders and the remainder is recycled. 

The drawer took the longest as it was the most eclectic and emotional. Five old pairs of glasses, six bow ties (in four colours) and three watches for starters. The glasses got binned, the ties were thinned out and the watches kept for when I find someone who wants watches. There were historical items: an address book (well two to be precise) dating back to my teens at least. Notably there were one or two sets of details that are still current, but most are not, and in many cases the people themselves no longer exist.... bin. Similarly a notebook where I wrote weekly details of a touring schedule. Briefly interesting to see how much I earnt (subsistence payments and travel payments varied) and also what I'd spent. Though how useful to me, or anyone else, is knowing the cost of a coffee in Middlesbrough twenty years ago? This is the sort of stuff that historians pour over to piece together the lives of those that have gone before us, and me putting this in the bin is why they have such a hard job of it. A short period of my life documented, now lost to the Newhaven incinerator.

A start on the desk was next and a box of business cards many from people who I can't ever remember working with; why I asked for, or was given a card. A sort through of the current (and living) their usefulness to me now. As expected the vast majority joined the address book. 

The modelling stuff is more difficult as it's hard to predict what will be useful or needed in the future. A whole cupboard of stuff and two hundred books... another day.