The Best and The Worst of The Deck Cleanout

I can't stop thanking Jen for helping me with my horrible under-deck cleanout yesterday. She says that she feels a bit bad - she had too much fun to be thanked all that much. But she still deserves The Thanking and so The Thanking she will get.

The best part of the day ... was the lunch. I won a $30 voucher for The Pancake Manor in the kindy Mothers Day raffle (the most rewarding kindy involvement I've had all year!) We set a time to break for lunch, and worked like crazy until then. Then we went and had savoury crepes for lunch and shared a Macadamia Shortstack for dessert. Wonderful!

The worst part of the day ... was the dump. We had spent hours making piles of Things No Longer Needed to take to the dump. I thought hard about what to send to the dump. I hate to throw things out, but I can and will do it. And the things that went were things I have hung onto for years, hoping against hope that one day they will be used and re-loved and cherished again. But alas, they haven't. The only purpose they serve is to junk up my house.

Everyone will tell you that these things must GO. If it hasn't been used in three years, if it hasn't been used since long before the move from our old flat to our current house, if all it ever does is collect dust, then it must GO. Right? [Uncertain pause.] Right!!

There were speech pathology resources that -seriously- nobody will use again (they haven't been used in the last three years, all therapists tend to make their own stuff, and all these things do is junk up my place), piles of papers, old shoes and slippers that were too old to be saleable by charity shops and mountains of cardboard from old boxes.

We physically threw the lot into the Giant Pit of Filthy Oozing Stench. It was tremendously enjoyable for Jen, whose junk it wasn't. "Whee! What a wonderful feeling!" she shouted while flinging piles of Things No Longer Needed into the pit.

"Oh dear," I'd say, ruefully surveying well-used brightly coloured speech pathology word cards atop Filthy Oozing Stench. "Everybody else's junk is so yucky and mine is so pretty!"

"Whee!" said Jen as another box of things went into the pit.

I winced. It was one Giant Pit of Filthy Oozing Stench, now topped with my old ugg boots. Too old to be saleable, too worn-out to continue wearing, but certainly not in the category of Filthy Oozing Stench. Pretty awful to see the things you once held dear re-classified as Filthy Oozing Stench.

The job was finished way too quickly. There it all lay, just out of reach. No going back. I took one last look before I turned back to the car, hoping I'd done the right thing.

Then I saw it. In the piles of old papers I'd deemed no longer needed, there had been an old Pay Slip from work.

Bother!

My father had always instilled in me a fear of allowing papers with any identifying information go to the dump without being torn into a million pieces. Heaven forbid someone should get hold of your name! Or your address! Or -horror of horrors- your Employee Number! And all of these things were on the Pay Slip which had fallen face-up out of reach, grinning at me, mocking me.

"PAY ADVICE!" it loudly proclaimed to the whole world, strongly suggesting that confidential information lay unconfidentially a few metres away.

"You've thrown things out that shouldn't be thrown out!" it hissed accusingly at me.

"Look over there," it suggested, indicating a second Pay Slip also mockingly lying face up a short distance away.

I felt gutted. I had been proud of myself - I'd thrown away areas of clutter that should have been thrown away ages ago. I had not wasted hours sifting meticulously through things but instead been ruthless and consigned it all to the dump. And now I was beginning to think that some of my stuff was too pretty, some too pre-loved and some too confidential to be thrown out!

Jen and I stood there wondering what to do. If we - okay, if I crawled into the Pit of Filthy Oozing Stench, I'd be sure to be noticed and get in trouble. (This is of course apart from the other obvious reason why I'd not be looking forward to a crawl through a Pit of Filthy Oozing Stench.)

I grabbed a rusty piece of an old bicycle that was near enough to reach, and threw it at the page, hoping it would turn upside down and disappear into the Filthy Oozing Stench. Instead it moved into a position where it was more visible. "What will I do?" I moaned to Jen.

"Maybe we could get a stick" - we found one - "and stab it" - she gave it a few savage pokes - "and bring it out that way."

And that's what my wonderful friend did. First one Pay Slip and the the other. Brilliant! We returned home, shredded the Pay Slips, and I privately vowed never to go back to the dump.

It's too traumatic.