Finishing Up the Loftovers

I am proud, amazed and most importantly relieved to announce that my experience in the attic is at a close. After 11 days of hard labour in grimy, sweltering conditions, no less than 145 boxes are numbered, colour-coded, documented and organised. Honestly, I don't know how I did it. My sister gave up after three days, so feeling motivated was difficult at times, but the work paid off.

Applause for Klaus.

I had a real breakthrough when I started moving out the big junk - old headboards, laminate flooring, rolls of carpet - floor was finally visible and I could actually start moving things around. I like to think that I had a bit of an adrenaline rush in the sixth evening - I spent until gone midnight at the job. I'd like to take this moment to thank Klaus Badelt for composing the music that kept me going through the hard times. Here are some pictures I took at the end of the night:

Think back to my last post - on Day Three the floor was still near-invisible. I think this must have only been about Day Six, but as you can probably see, the progress made was substantial!

There bin liners pictured here were just filled with rubbish...I seriously dread to think of how many bin liners went to the tip in total - I hate the thought of landfill sites and waste. Thankfully most stuff is recyclable these days, so a lot of the junk was sorted into electronics, metal, wood etc.

This was the pile left to sort, which believe me, looked like a heap from heaven at the time, in comparison to the scale of work I had been facing all those days before. It still took me another five days to complete, despite this. Such is life.

Fini!

And here are some pictures of the end result. I'm yet to finish typing up 'The Roof Book', where the contents of the numbered boxes will be documented, but you can see how the system will work. What's more, we have a massive amount of unwanted stuff to car boot, so hopefully my efforts will pay towards the decorating of our hallway. This is the middle part, for household things:

The front right-hand side, for camping equipment. Some of the larger camping stuff was too big for boxes, but most bits are stored:

Childhood, on the front left-hand side. It was really hard to stack this all neatly as there were so many boxes, the most out of the five categories by far:

A close up of the Childhood sign, just a print-out stapled inside a plastic wallet for protection. Simple yet efficient:

There's a raised ledge at the back of the attic, and this is where all of the Christmas stuff is stored in plastic boxes - there didn't seem much point in documenting it as it has to come out every year:

One of the pathways on the right-hand side, leading from Camping to the smaller Work category. The left-hand side is similarly organised, the pathway leading from Childhood to School. The Household category fits neatly in the middle:

A little plastic basket I found whilst clearing in the earlier stages is now used for holding the permanent markers for labelling, a torch, scissors, tape and the colour-code stickers:

Flat-pack boxes by the ladder, ready for use should there be new things to store:

An overview photo, which nicely sums up my work. There will also be a 'Sign In/Out' book, so when you remove or put stuff back up, everyone knows. Sounds a hassle I know, but it'll avoid it becoming chaotic again! I feel like a proud mum: