Clutter

Over the last few months, one way or another, the subject of parting with personal possessions has cropped up time and time again. In some cases it is stuff with no real use but some emotional attachment (more difficult, obviously) but in many cases it is practical junk “which might be useful one day”.

So here is a theory; when we hang on to a publicly owned library book for longer than the allotted time we receive a fine; and some of us regard the planet on which we live not as our possession to be inherited by our children later, but as our children's possession of which we are temporary custodians. Can we not treat stuff in the same way? Allowing others to make use of it when we are not making use of it ourselves? With the expectation that when we do actually need one of those, someone else will be chucking one out? Can that work?

The traditional houses in Glossa village do not have wardrobes, only a series of pegs at high level all the way around the walls of the bedrooms. Historically people did not own enough clothes to fill a wardrobe but they might have enough to cover the walls of their bedroom. With that few clothes they are all worn frequently enough for hanging them openly on walls not to cause them any damage. This makes perfect sense to me. It is less possible to do the same thing in Britain because the climate means that we require more clothes, it's that simple.

I know several houses in Britain where the walls of most rooms are lined not with clothes but with books. It is not possible for the occupants of those houses to read all of those books in what remains of their life time, but they are kept, and not released into the wild, where others might enjoy them. In the sheds and garages of those same houses are an unfathomable quantity of hooks, the type for fixing to walls or the backs of doors from which to hang clothing. These hooks can never possibly be used because all of the hanging space is already occupied by books. If the books cannot be released into the wild then can the hooks not be instead?

These are shelves hoping to receive more previously loved things to be enjoyed by children who have already parted with everything they ever had.