Dear FIL departed this life in 1998 ... MIL is still clearing out his store sheds and workshops ... one down, two to go ... but in the meantime she’s had her own shed built ... 🤭
Last summer my neighbour asked if I would go through her husband's shed and clear out the rubbish. He had died 2 1/2 years previous and she had only just plucked up to courage to consider clearing it. Sadly she died just a couple of weeks after I started, but her sons asked me to carry on with the job. Bob, the husband, had been something of a 'collector' shall we say, but was very organised. He had just about every type and size of screw known to man, all stored in separate jars and neatly labelled. His shed was about 12' x 10' with cabinets and chest of drawers around 3 walls. One draw was completely full of gloves, some of which could have been used to knock nails in with. They must have been used when making concrete but retained "In case I need them again".
In amongst all the less useful stuff were a number of really high quality tools which I was told I was welcome to have, and are now in my shed. (History repeating?). I also found 2 micrometer guages with his son's name engraved on them. It turned out they were prizes awarded to the son when he was an apprentice and he thought them long gone. He was delighted to discover they were still there and now reside with him in Canada.
What worked very well for the sons when they were clearing the house and garage was to put anything potentially useful to others at the end of the skip nearest the gate. Much disappeared within hours, if not minutes, of being placed in there. They reckoned that the equivalent of a large skips worth was taken by people, saving them a fortune in skip cost.
I live in London. A few roads away, you can see into the back gardens. In one there is a boat, the kind with a big fin-like thing on the bottom and a sort of cabin in the top. It has a sort of 60s/70s look about it ( you can tell how much I know about boats). It's covered in algae and ivy. I suspect the only water it's ever seen is rain. There is a river nearby, but apart from the floods in 66, it never gets deeper than one foot. I think it was probably won in one of those game shows where you could win a cuddly toy or a hostess trolley. It looks vaguely post apocalyptic now.
Being London I'm surprised they aren't renting it out as some kind of alternative lifestyle housing for £1000 a month.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
w.edges - you're right. Hipsters would fork out for that Someone along the road from me has a boat out the back. No idea why - looks knackered, and doesn't enhance anyone's view as it's covered in a tatty old tarpaulin. Bl**dy eyesore. Doesn't look like it's seen a river or loch of any kind for decades. Mind you, with the amount of rain there's been recently - perhaps it'll be floating past the back door soon....
I suppose they don't want to pay to have it taken away either B3. Not the sort of thing you can chuck in the car and take to the tip
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
in the 80s a friend of mine moved near Gatwick to a house share and there was a "bedroom" in the garage.
Sadly there is quite a lot of this going on, often full of migrant workers houses intended for family's of 3 or 4 with 15 or more in them. I think we are going back to Victorian times where shift workers used to "hot bed" ie one out one in aaarrgh!! Re: those useful items, we have a chap on the Allotments some people call Steptoe, but the great thing is I can give him some of my "useful" items knowing he will either make some thing even better from it or that I can get it back again when I remember what it was I was keeping it for
We have a stockpile of widgets. Any time OH decides he's going to fix something - car, usually - it will transpire after about an hour of dis-assembly that he needs a widget that's a different size to the 267,523 widgets he already has. This is followed by a couple of hours internet shopping, a few days waiting for the post, finding the one he ordered is still the wrong size, rinse and repeat about 4 times per task. A month later the correct size widget will have arrived and his enthusiasm for the task will have evaporated and he'll have moved on. This is why we have currently 5 cars only two of which are actually operational in any sense.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Someone along the road from me has a boat out the back. No idea why - looks knackered, and doesn't enhance anyone's view as it's covered in a tatty old tarpaulin. Bl**dy eyesore. Doesn't look like it's seen a river or loch of any kind for decades.
Mind you, with the amount of rain there's been recently - perhaps it'll be floating past the back door soon....
I suppose they don't want to pay to have it taken away either B3. Not the sort of thing you can chuck in the car and take to the tip
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Re: those useful items, we have a chap on the Allotments some people call Steptoe, but the great thing is I can give him some of my "useful" items knowing he will either make some thing even better from it or that I can get it back again when I remember what it was I was keeping it for
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”