The Accumulation Of Stuff

We bought our house ten years ago this year, and don’t ask me where that time has gone because I have no clue. We still have some stuff in boxes from when we moved in! When we first bought it, I put dibs on one of the top floor bedrooms (it’s a three storey terrace) which I planned to use as my music studio/office and general man-cave. Initially however we used it to store all manner of junk and extraneous stuff we were not sure what to do with. And it stayed like that for several years – almost 8 years in fact.

I finally got around to doing something about it a couple of years ago when I picked up a now defunct freelance writing gig and felt I needed a quiet space away from the rest of the house in which to work. So I set to work cleaning it out, marvelling all the time at where some of the utter junk that was in there had come from. I then installed the basic necessities to get me started on the writing gig , a desk, a PC, a WiFi extender half way up the stairs so I could pick up the signal. In terms of décor, I drilled a few guitar hooks onto the wall and hung up some of my guitars. Others are on a rack stand while still others are kept in cases. (By rights they should all be kept in cases when not being used, and for the most part I do keep the acoustic guitars in cases, but even with the solid electrics,  the humidity in Singapore can play havoc with strings and metal hardware over time) I also put in a small storage cabinet inherited from someone’s workplace, probably Mags.  Into this little unit I put all the stuff that I was unsure of – is it junk or might I need it someday?  And true to form I promptly forgot all about it, and over time it has become The Cabinet Of The Great Unknown

Two years or so on, and over the last few days I have been “improving” the room a bit. I had some posters lying around, from plays and gigs I have done, so we went to IKEA and got some frames, and they are now up on previously bare walls.  I tidied up the book case (well – most of it; the bottom two shelves are chock full of old CDs and cassettes, many of which are unlabelled. That will be a project for another day – to go through all those and see what’s on them.) My turntable/cassette/CD player unit is seated atop The  Cabinet of The Great Unknown, and the delightful sounds of my nascent but slowly growing vinyl collection emanates from it daily. (It has Bluetooth as well so when I get tired of standing up to turn over a record I can just Spotify my phone to it). And this morning I decided to attempt a clear out of said storage cabinet, which leads me to the title of today’s post.

I am utterly bewildered by the amount of crap I had accumulated in that cupboard. There was old mail going back ten years. Certificates from courses I did at work in Melbourne more than twenty years ago. Several thumb-drives, albeit they are quite old and therefore relatively small by todays standards, but you can never have too many of those things.  There was a LOT of very  old cables for use with various devices which I no longer have and in truth, am unsure I ever did. I think the cables have been breeding and mutating. One or two have been kept because I will have use for them when I come to start recording some songs in the near future. And even more unlabelled CDs and cassettes, which have now joined their friends on the bottom two shelves of the bookcase. There were cables and instruction books for a Sony Handycam handheld DVD Video Camera, which I think we got as a freebie when we signed up to something – cable TV or some such. No sign of the camera, but when would you ever use something like that now? You’d get better results on your phone.

It got me thinking of the sheer amount of stuff that we pay through the nose for when it’s new and in vogue – TVs, soundbars, computers, phones, the list goes on and on – and most of it is broken within two years, and not worth fixing and so eventually ends up in landfill, along with dead fridges, washing machines and even clothes (how much of what is in your wardrobe to you wear on a regular basis – be honest?!) And I haven’t even started on all the plastic tat we buy at times like Halloween, or that McDonald’s gives out in Happy Meals. Absolutely useless shite that practically all ends up dumped. The entire economy seems to depend on the never ending accumulation of stuff. Whatever companies sold last year, they simply must sell more this year – cos y’know, we have to have growth no matter what. I’m not exactly fiscally smart or savvy I admit and I know little to nothing about economics, but infinite increments in manufacturing stuff, on a planet with finite resources, seems a bit nuts. Still, smarter folks than me have written extensively about such things, so I won’t rant too much about it. After all, nobody has ever forced me to buy anything, so I am as much a contributor to this craziness as anyone. There’s a great documentary about it all though, The Men Who Made Us Spend. I think it’s on YouTube – I must have a look for it again.

However, all the junk aside, I did find a few gems today which gave me no small measure of delight. A DVD with a 6 minute slideshow of embarrassing and hilarious childhood photos of us both, which was compiled by our friends (without our knowledge) and shown on a huge screen at our wedding. A few other CDs and cassettes that I thought I had lost – and then this DVD (see picture) which has me baffled. I have no idea where/when/how I acquired this. If I bought it myself, it must have been a hell of a long time ago because I don’t remember doing so. If I borrowed it from someone, I don’t recall who. I hope I bought it myself, maybe on one of our many Irish holidays – which tend to blend into each other now. In any case I am delighted to have found it and for the foreseeable, I will be spending a little bit of time each day in the (virtual) company of Mr. Brady, learning how he does that magical stuff on guitar that he does, with weird and wonderful alternate tunings and chord voicings etc. Let the fun begin  – never stop learning! 🙂

Laters!

GM