Spring Clean
Last year I made a life changing decision, ok admittedly I was forced in to it by a severe lack of money, but nonetheless, it was still life changing, and having just done a huge spring clean, I’m so glad I did.
It’s official, I have given up my addiction to ‘new gadgets’. Fancy phones, iPods, iPod touches, game consoles, fancy computer tablets….forget about diamonds, gadgets used to be the way to this girls heart. I know that means I’ve just outed myself as a big geek, but I’m kind of proud of it. I don’t mind if you know I get excited by the fact my phone has a weather ‘app’ which makes a mini windscreen wiper swipe across it on a rainy day. (I should have left that bit out shouldn’t I? It makes me look really sad and goes a long way to describing the single bit of Sassy and Single doesn’t it?) But have you noticed how now more than ever, our addiction to having the ‘latest anything’, means no sooner have you worked out how to turn your shiny new purchase on, than a newer, better and very tempting version of it is already on the shelves?
Makes me wonder where all this ‘out of date’ stuff will end up. During a recent clean up it felt really wrong to throw out an old computer monitor which although it was in perfect working order, was fourteen years old, thus it was the size of a small portable television (well at least the size small portable televisions used to be before they too visited slimming world). Other things I threw out included a darkroom developing kit (I can’t even remember the last time I printed a photo out, let alone did it myself) and a video recorder. Again, it’s been well over 10 years since I was the member of a video store.
Feeling guilty, I then went online to check the second hand value of a few other things lying around the house. (Be warned, you might want to have a stiff drink in hand if you try this yourself!) My large TV which originally cost about a grand? Now worth twenty quid on eBay. My (formerly) expensive SLR film camera complete with zoom lenses, also £20. A hand held Nintendo Game Boy with games, £4. And collectively the seven mobile phones I’ve got sitting in a drawer are worth £24. Strangely their chargers are now worth more than the actual phones are!
I’ve now decided there is only one solution to saving both the planet and my sanity, and that is to become a hoarder. Admittedly it will make me an even bigger social outcast than the whole geeky girl thing did, but on the up side, having spent Sunday evening watching Antiques Roadshow, I’ve calculated it should only take just over sixty years for everything I’ve got to become valuable again.
