Snakes In The Attic

7th September 2012 Friday

 We are de-cluttering my husband's office. It's a hot bright blue morning.  Spewed out in front of us on the carpet is a jungle of wires and cables - years and years worth of leads and connectors and adaptors for phones and computers and printers, CD players and radios. For me they might as well be a coiled nest of vipers. We are searching among them for the lead for the old keyboard and trying to choose what to keep and what to throw away.

In the end my sister, who is holding me together in this  seething sea of technology, suggests we put them in a big box in the attic so we don’t have to make any final decision. Every time my husband picks up a book or a file or an ornament or a piece of equipment she asks the vital de-clutter’s question,

 ‘Love it, use it or chuck it?’

Sometimes I leave the room and go and make us a cup of tea when I see how my husband is struggling to decide or to remember what something is that he is holding in his hand. Like a fat file full of printed papers and screeds of his hand written notes. On the front of the file it says NLP - A Practitioner’s Course. He studied it for a year in London.

Any idea what it is? he asks.

I explain Neuro Linguistic Programming but fortunately he throws the file away - making space for things he does want and can use. Like paint brushes and a piano.

We never find the lead for the old keyboard which my wonderful sister takes away in her car along with a many other items from my husband’s old life to give to the charity shop.

Later we haul the box of cables up the ladder and into the loft. Just clever bits of plastic and wire - not snakes in the attic after all.