It’s amazing how much crap you accumulate over the years. Take for example all the stuff that you slaved over at school / college / university. Once you put it all together in a pile, there’s alot of it (or maybe not if you slacked off).

So it’s a bit of a nightmare when years down the line you come to try and sort through it all, trying to make space for stuff that’s more relevant and more important (in my case, CDs). What makes this task extra difficult is the fact that it’s your own work, assignments you put hours and hours of time and effort into and so therefore something you want to keep - but none of it is actually of any real practical use. So do you chuck it, or keep it?

Another reason I hate doing this kind of task is that it always takes so damn long. Not only because there is just so much to sift through, but because every other book you open or little thing you find is a trip down memory lane. Photos are the worst for that, albums that you’d forgotten you had that were sat under a pile of old textbooks waiting to be discovered again, along with them memories of some family holiday you took years ago or some trip that you went on with friends.

There’s an awful lot of seriously random shit buried away here too, stuff that’s like “why on earth is this in here in the first place?”. An old wheel and tyre off a friends bike, for example. And this thing, which I think was my first mobile phone. I remember being seriously amazed at how small and compact it was, and I now I can’t believe I actually walked around with that in my pocket without falling over.

Some of this stuff I really should sell before I head off to the US. Anyone interested in a few Buffy VHS boxed sets? Oh, and I’ve three old PC-AT cases (some with components inside) lying around here looking for a good home, and a bunch of old disks too (SCSI and IDE) if someone could find a use for them.