Sunday, 25 September 2011

Packing like Crazy

With the whole house to pack into boxes, pretty much, and Mum away, and with very few days before Mr Dempsey's big green lorry pulls up outside, we are packing stuff into boxes and sealing them with parcel tape for every hour that Dad's little leggies and arms can handle it. We break off every few hours for a respite coffee or some other distraction. Our problem is that we are very booky household, with an inordinate amount of books and paper-related, equally dense material (diaries, files, print outs, pre-digital packets of photos, magazines etc).

This is all heavy stuff even though Mum has pre-empted her own tendency to create massively heavy, monolithic, tea chest sized slabs of solid paper by buying on-line, a good selection of flat boxes just waiting to be assembled. This selection includes smaller boxes clearly labelled "books" to try to steer the packers away from the hernia-weight boxes, and Dad is sticking to those for the books.

This was a bit of an awesome task, so Dad has started in just one room, determined to clear its entire contents into sealed boxes before moving on to the next one, rather than fanny around indecisively prodding this and tinkering with that. In between bursts of book packing, there are opportunities to free up some more junk which can be carried down to the front drive 'free-cycle' point, Son of Junk-Pile 1 ! Today this method managed to clear the big computer desk (dissembled) and a dresser, assorted olde scanners, printers and computer bits, a weighing scales, some huge coffee table books, some gardening magazines, empty box files and lever arch files and other stationery.

It all goes, welcomed aboard by the good folks of Faversham for its 'onward journey'. Where to, we will never know. The desk and dresser, we know, went to two nice ladies who have moved out of a small 2-up-2-down into a bigger house and lack furniture; we know because Dad spotted them loading the desk and offered to help them, then invited them in to see the dresser and invited them to come back for it when he'd emptied it in 15 minutes (which they did). It never actually touched the junk pile. This actually came to us from Diamond originally so now it moves on to another phase of its much-recycled life, to another loving home. She will be pleased.

Now run out of enthusiasm for parcel tape, Dad is chillin' with a beer and supper.
Deefs

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