I'm not a hoarder; I just have a lot of stuff

The Farm Manager has been on my case for a while now to clear out the woodshed. That includes boxes and boxes of stuff that in some cases have been unopened in twenty five years and three or four moves. Some stuff has been around even longer.

My golf clubs for example. Last round of golf I played was around thirty years ago. But they keep moving with me. I didn’t ever play a round of golf when I lived in Calgary, but I had a friend bring them out on an Air Canada flight. Not so much for the clubs, but for the jar of hash oil in the bottom of the bag.

I don’t blame the FM for wanting the woodshed cleaned up. After all, we’ve gone two winters now without heating with wood, so maybe it’s time. I used to hand-split the fire wood back there, and over the years, between the wood-chips and the stray bark and the sawdust, a carpet of wood detritus a couple of inches thick had accumulated on the concrete floor.

Chloe and Double-wide like to hang out back there. I’d set out a cat box for them and a little water dish. As I got to shovelling the stuff off the floor and into a wheelbarrow, I realized why we so seldom had to change the cat litter. Apparently they’ve considered the entire 16 x 20 foot space one giant cat box!

Anyway, I wheeled out about ten loads of wood-shavings generously infused with kitty waste. We’ll be growing some mighty fine pumpkins in the compost heap next year.

We always get a few pumpkins out of the compost pile. That’s because every year after Halloween we toss the jack-o-lantern in the compost. Next year, more pumpkins!

That’s my kind of gardening.

Then I had to do triage on some of the shit that’s been piling up on the shelves back there, which entails opening those boxes. When I move house, I generally have one box marked “kitchen,” one box marked “bathroom,” and a couple dozen boxes labelled “miscellaneous.”

That’s where the walk down memory lane begins. You know when your kid makes a cute drawing at age three and you stick in on the fridge door with a magnet? Well, I’ve still got every drawing that ever graced the fridge from age three till about thirteen, when they got too self-conscious to have their art on display, at least on the fridge door at Dad’s place.

And the photographs! Holy nostalgia, Batman!

That’s kinda where my clearing out the woodshed project is stuck. All these pictures of when the children were wee toddlers and then a little older and then my daughter got braces and Junior got his hair bleached and before you know it they’re all grown up.

It’s happy-sad kinda thing.

There’s also the stuff that you’re keeping because it doesn’t quite work the way it should but you could probably fix it if you got around to it.

The bass amp.

The Poulan chainsaw.

The kerosene heater, the two or three electric heaters, the generator that the dogs chewed the knobs of, the crock-pot… and so on.

Eventually you’ve got to face the fact that you’re never gonna get around to doing anything with this shit.

Like I said, triage.