I’m clandestinely helping to clean the house. It’s funny how all those years ago my parents would constantly nag me to clean my room, but these days my mother actively works against my attempt to organize the basement. Of course, my concept of cleaning involves initially throwing away the bulk of stuff that can only be described as useless. The latest battleground has been books. Boxes and shelves of my parents old college/highschool textbooks, crappy novels from the 70’s and early 80’s, and assorted programming guides and tutorials that are just a little bit dated. My mother is, of course, offended that I would get rid of these books which could be useful. My argument is that nobody has so much as glanced at these books they were crammed in these spaces when we first moved to this place back in 1995. They’re clearly not useful, and her ignorance of what was and was not available in that pile proved how the usefulness of these books was far past gone.
But hey, maybe books about nursing from the mid 1960’s, programming guides for Fortran IV and Ada, and tutorials on Wordstar are still of use in 2012.
My mother’s not a hoarder, the living areas of the house are well kept, however she’s irritatingly hesitant to part with things, leaving to the over crowding of storage areas (the garage, basement, and most shelving) with materials she will never use but insists is “useful.” Even 20 year old VHS tapes–some of which she has DVD replacements for.
Awesome ^ Totally 