The Eclectic Interweb

A couple of months ago I decided it was about time I took our house ‘in hand’. I’ve done next to no real maintenance in years and my growing collection of the bloody useless has slowly mounted up until I couldn’t see the floor for the mess! Since it’s Spring over here I figured this was an ideal time to get on with it and so we did.

As in most houses, the larger part of the clutter is caused by things we haven’t used in years. These are things that would cost a lot to replace if we ever needed them, the emphais being on the *if*. Also of course they are things you can’t give away – even to friends! Eventually tho enough was enough and as the wife had taken a week off work we decided to attack the place. Ok *I* did… the wife just wanted a holiday.

So far, just out of our *bedroom* we’ve thrown away three bin bags full of rubbish mostly old clothes and shoes… but also a wide assortment of magazines, some of which have never been read but are so old the content has been superseded!

Also out of the bedroom went a lot of the computer gear that I’ve had stored in there since last Xmas when the ‘computer room’ was turned into a bedroom for the ‘guests’ (cough spit… ).

You may think so ok big deal… but amongst the detritus of 20 years of hoarding computing equipment were 12 working desktop computers, two laptops, and 4 half built computer carcases. All in the bedroom. As you can tell the wife is a very patient lady… either that or couldn’t care whether the house is clean an clear or not. I think I’ll opt for patient or I might become one! 

Some of the stuff we shipped out (back to the ‘computer room) will be used in the long promised but not yet arrived ‘Great Grand Mega-Mammoth Garage Sale’ which we’ve promised ourselves for some months… but a lot was just dumped into the garbage bins – now filled to overflowing with four days before it’s emptied! In the UK we’d be imprisoned for having so much in it!!

Anyway, out went (or into the ‘Garage Sale’ pile) my collection of ‘legacy’ 5¼” floppy drives, 3½” floppy drives, video cards, CD drives, video/sound/LAN/etc cards, motherboards, 1Mb (and lower!) RAM strips at least three dozen power cables, printer cables, loads of LAN cabling, switches, 2 x 20 port routers, a dozen or so external modems and the like. Even my last Apple computer went out along with its printer, screen. k/b and mouse. Tho I’ve not even booted it since we moved in here and that’s 10 years!

The result of all this sorting is that at last we can see the carpet again!! Whilst this is a plus in some ways, we now realise it needs replacing so it’s a bit of a mixed blessing.

Naturally, with the sort of clutter we’ve accumulated, it’s not *all* gone. For example, I still have several tea chests filled with 5¼” and 3½” disks filled with programs and utilities that are now entirely useless… but I’ve had some of them 25 years and they represent a lot of history so they have been ‘hidden’ away. Also secreted is one of the laptops that runs Win 98, also an older desktop that runs Windows 3.1, and an even older ‘286’… complete with green screen monitor’. Well… you never know when this stuff might come in handy do you??

This lot has been piled into the cupboard that holds my Drizabone… the one I wore around *London* in the ‘summer’ before we migrated… and that I can no longer fit into, and a huge pile of photos that I’ve promised myself to one day annotate and stick in albums… or at least scan into the computer… or something.

Will someone remind me in ten years that I promised myself I’d do it ‘soon’??

And so, I’m now having a 5 minute break before getting back to finish off tidying around the floors before I tackle the one remaining pile… my computer workbench. It’s also in the bedroom and is piled high with stuff I’ve not yet managed to bring myself to discard.

Next week…. the garage itself… maybe!!