TOT: be kind to your children

[Owain]

I do not have clutter.

I have collections and archives.

Owain

[Andy Champ]

My Mum is trying to de-clutter.

By giving it to us...

Andy

[Tim Lamb]

Me neither.

I have possibles!

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

I've made a start on my collection of crap - it's building up nicely. Fuck the kids.

[ARW]

Enjoy the OAP home they put you into:-)

[damduck-egg]

On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:34:42 +0100, Bill Wright wrote:

I'm quite fortunate, Mother and Father had been thinning out things for the past 20 years or so.Some items had belonged to generations before but they found it more useful to put items in an auction room and use the proceeds to get something useful like a dish washer or a holiday than look after dust collectors as Mum puts it.Father died two years ago and mother had his clothes distributed to charity shop,dump or some unused shirts to me within two days of his death. Sounds as if she is a bit callous but she had already been widowed once 50 years before and found doing what had to be done almost automatic and better than doing nothing. The first skip arrived a week later and we filled it between us, last year another was filled and his gray Fergie sold, Seeing that depart on a trailer was the only item that I really had a lump in my throat about but for a selfish reason ,A Shoulder injury meant he couldn't crank start his previous Fordson so I did it before going to school,when I left home at 17 he had to get a tractor with electric start and watching it leave it suddenly dawned I was now older than he was then and how long ago it was. Today we arranged to stay for a short visit next month, she rang back and said she had booked a skip " to get rid of the last stuff from the engine shed* as Dads Workshop was called. So that should be the last of his stuff. Not too bad for a smallholding. Sister has already taken some papers/documents which will be useful for following generations to look at but its not much more than one box file while my brother and myself have taken some tools between us. But duplicates will be disposed off,a lot went with a scrap drive a few years ago with along with some old farm implements. Mothers aim is to be able to move out should she need to with nothing more than two vans,one to where she is going, one to the dump. If she doesn't move then eventually it will be one van to the dump one to a salesroom . With the 3rd skip we will be at that point.

• So called because it used to also house a generator before the mains came. All of 3kva but it was enough at the time.

G Harman

[Bill Wright]

[e-mail] wrote: snip

Very interesting post.

Bill

[Nightjar]

My clutter is not that well organised.

Colin Bignell

[Chris J Dixon]

Over on uk.rec.sheds

the term used is "tqt" - top quality tat

I haven't been over there lately, but they always seemed to have lots to say about it.

Chris

[Richard Tobin]

Build an extension.

-- Richard

[Phil]

In message , Another John writes

Said Eve to Adam at their first meeting...

[Bill Wright]

I think the word clutter is normally used to refer to items of little value, although that wouldn't be a universal rule. It would be just about possible to say, "Madame's dressing table was cluttered with jewellery." I wouldn't be happy with that really though. I'd rather used 'strewn'. However, if the writer was trying to suggest, obliquely, that Madame put very little value on her expensive possessions, 'clutter' might be a way of doing it.

Bill

[Roger Mills]

LOL! But what did she have to compare it with?

[Hugo Nebula]

As someone on the other end of this process, I welcome your forethought.

After starting with the, "box everything up & sort it out later" approach, I quickly realised that this would a) require lots & lots of boxes, and b) move all of Mum's junk into my house.

The way I went after this was to categorise each item into i) of intrinsic value (i.e., worth some money), ii) of sentimental value (letters, photos, etc.), and iii) everything else. 'Everything else' has been whittled down to virtually zero by way of charity shops and the tip.

[Steve Terry]

I have a lot of pre owned land fill

Steve Terry

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

It was just a language problem. He thought you said, "Steal everything."

[Steve Terry]

Obviously it's habit, people think they hear the things they have heard many times before.

Steve Terry

[Nightjar]

That is not how the dictionary defines it:

OED uses virtually the same words as I do above. However, it would not be the only word to be used wrongly.

Colin Bignell

[Bill Wright]

Irrespective of dictionary definitions, which tend to lag behind common usage and to ignore the nuances that ordinary people accept, I feel sure that most people have an expectation of low value if the word clutter is used, if only because a different (probably informal) word or phrase would be used if the items were valuable. "The house was cluttered up with old newspapers, items of clothing, all sorts of stuff." "She had a lot of antiques; you could hardly move for all the stuff she had in the house."

Bill

[Nightjar]

That is your interpretation. It is not mine. As I said originally, applying any sense of value to the contents of a clutter is purely subjective.

Colin Bignell