Wednesday 19 March 2008

Getting rid of clutter

A while ago we cleared out our kitchen. This was in preparation of the arrival of a new oven, my Grandmother had her kitchen remodelled and offered us her three year old gas cooker, a big upgrade on our thirty year old gas cooker; and also the eventual arrival of our new fridge/freezer, delayed by the necessity of purchasing a new tumble dryer when the old one broke down and also my Xbox 360!

We decided to throw away our not-quite (OK, not at all) imitation Welsh dresser on the basis that all the drawers were falling to bits. When it came down to it very few of the items it housed apart from the bread bin and the coffee maker were of much use to anyone anyway.

So, in a fit of enthusiasm I went through the entire kitchen and managed to dispose of several bags of junk. I found items whose function I wasn't even sure of!!! Having done this I felt incredibly Zen, and proceeded to 'de-clutter' the Pink Room (the Pink Room isn't really pink... it has two pink walls and two blue walls (none of which you can see due to furniture etc.) and a blue carpet... but it has a lot of pink stuff in it!), the Pink Room is my dressing room - so you can imagine the scope for junk there. Threw away another bag of junk and still felt Zen.

The bedroom lets me down. The bedroom has less scope for de-cluttering. Full of books (mostly mine), the contents of my desk (all mine), the Beanie Baby collection (mine) and the console collection (mine). Oh, and there is the junk pile behind the TV set... (not all mine) but hey, out of sight out of mind. I decided that the only bit I could realistically do anything about was the console collection... so I decided to sell three of the five on eBay.

I was a bit annoyed to find that eBay would not let me offer personal cheque as a form of payment only PayPal. Fair enough you think? Buyer and seller protection you think? Maybe, but just remember who owns PayPal! I would have been less annoyed if they were giving the choices of WorldPay (or whatever) but to give only one choice which is effectively their subsidiary, and then they charge fees on the PayPal transaction as well as the eBay fees. Nice little earner.

So, one small corner of the bedroom is a little tidier. I'll worry about the rest another day.