Sometimes You've Got To Be 'Roofless'

 So Long A Levels!

I am pleased to announce that after a painful month or so of waiting for English Literature, which I sat on June 20th, my A Level exams are finally finished! Thank. Goodness. For that. I'm hoping that this new freedom will allow me to update my blog frequently - I have so much to talk about!

Cash in the Attic?

Over the last three days, my younger sister and I have been carrying out the near-impossible task of clearing out our roof. We've lived in our house for a good ten years, and over that period of time, stuff we've no longer wanted or needed has just been dumped up there. As a result, when you go up the ladder these days you can barely move an inch for the piles and piles of clutter. Just to give you an idea of how chaotic this situation really is:

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So yeah, pretty embarrassing. It's actually hard to take a photo which illustrates the scale of the damage, because you can't move into a position where you can get a photo of the entire thing. Our house is of a reasonable size, so just imagine a very big space, filled to the beams with junk. A lot of it is unboxed too, or else just in plastic bags - NIGHTMARE.

Our incentive for this escapade is selling the stuff we don't want at a Car Boot Sale and putting the money towards redecorating our hallway, which has somewhat fallen into decay - giving it a new coat of paint, stripping up the carpet on the stairs/landing/in the hallway and laying down wooden floorboards. A lot of potential sale stuff belongs to our parents, so we've had to get their consent before putting it in the 'Selling' pile. My Mum is a bit of a hoarder, so we've told her she has to be 'roofless' (get my pun?) and only keep the stuff she needs.

Day One.

In the last three days we've made significant progress, but the amount of work left to do is daunting. On day one we emptied as much as we could into my older sister's room, who is conveniently away on holiday for two weeks:

We also used the upstairs bathroom as a dumping ground:

Leaving a (tiny) fraction of the attic empty:

 We then had to face the near-impossible task of trying to sort through it. On Wednesday we spent from 2pm until 11pm on the job, re-boxing things categorically. We have a new system in which each box is numbered, and everything in each numbered box is recorded in a notebook. This way, if anyone ever needs something from the roof in the future, they refer to the book to locate it, rather than rifling through various boxes and making the place a bombsite again. We also have 5 categories (Christmas, Camping, Childhood, School/Work, Household/Electrical) - we plan to colour-code the boxes with stickers and divide the boxes into sections to make it even easier to locate objects. Genius, if I may say so myself, but easier said than done - every step takes time. Here's my sister, bubble-wrapping ceramics made by my mum years ago:

   Although tedious at times, it's an interesting job - here's a bag of makeup we found belonging to my mum, a good 20 years old! No longer useable of course, but interesting to think of how long it's avoided the bin:

 Day Two.

 

After a well deserved sleep we began our second day of intense manual labour, which began by moving any sealed/completed boxes back into the empty space in the attic. We decided to try working within the roof rather than pulling it all down this time around, in order to save some time and effort...and mess!  It's hard to keep the morale up in such conditions, so we played the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack to raise our spirits - such a motivator. This photo was taken at the end of day two - considerably better on the far left hand side, but still horrific:

Day Three.

  

By the end of day three things actually looked different, which is such a relief, words cannot describe. Although nothing is organised as such yet, boxes are sealed and stacked and the far left-hand side of the attic actually has floor space. Like...you can SEE the floor! Wow:

 

You can see our numbering system clearly here. We're nearly on box 60 now and yet we have so many more to fill! I made a bet with my sister on how many it'd take altogether - I said 75, she 103 - she's going to win without a doubt:

And finally, for the sake of nostalgia, a picture of the Puppy in my Pocket and Kitty in my Pocket toys we came across, among our favourite childhood toys back in the 90s:

That's all for now, but I'll be sure to post an update with pictures when the task is entirely complete...give me a couple of weeks, maybe a month?