Clearing Out

My mother-in-law packed her bags and moved back to Germany this week. She had been living in Britain for nearly 20 years but really needed a flat on a single level rather than our old terrace house with its tight staircase. I think it would have suited us for her to move to a flat locally but the uncertainty surrounding Brexit has left her feeling unwelcome for some time. Maybe if Scotland had become independent she would have stayed but as it is she wanted to jump whilst she could still make the journey back. I suppose she has experience with this after experiencing the inhumanity of both the Nazis and Stasi (which she maintains consisted of exactly the same personnel) and she has a fairly good idea of how badly things turn out when a bunch of extremists are left in charge. Catching a ferry from Newcastle is somewhat more dignified than having to jump a fence in Berlin.

The upshot of all this is that we now need to clear out her house and sell it on. She took quite a bit of furniture and belongings with her but there are still a lots of things that I need to find a home for. In terms of the furniture, my first thought was to contact a few local charities. The British Heart Foundation have taken quite a few items, mostly shelving units and a glass TV unit. I was hoping that they would take the sofa but they thought it was too stained. I cleaned this up with carpet cleaner and it looked brand new so I phoned the Salvation Army but they only take suites. As it is, I managed to spill oil all over our (rather tatty) sofa at home so I’m taking this myself. If nothing else it is whippet coloured so shouldn’t show up any dog hair. The one other item was a single bed which someone from Freegle has taken.

Aside from the furniture she also left lots of books – almost all German language ones. For the most part these are in very good condition but there is a limited market for German books in the UK. Some of the German “classics” were taken by our local library who were quite happy to restock their foreign language section but many of them are just novels and biographies. Raymond has expressed some interest in them. I am planning to go through the boxes with him and anything that he isn’t interested in can go on Ebay. Even if I only cover the postage costs with them I will at least know that the books are going to a good home.

The rest of the house clearance is actually much more familiar to me. Over the years we have used her loft space as an additional storage area. Having removed the boxes I now have a house full of my hoardings. I will have to decide what to do with an electric bass guitar, a 1980’s Japanese Heavy Metal guitar an acoustic guitar that I have no recollection of and an early 1990’s Roland Synthesiser. To be honest, I rather fancy keeping some of these, providing I can find somewhere sensible to store them, but one of the other things to deal with is a rather large collection of old vinyl records.

A few years ago it was almost impossible to give away vinyl but now it is increasingly becoming a major force in music with the vinyl release often being the big money spinner – especially for older acts. I’ve never thrown out a vinyl record; I do have an emotional attachment to them as I can often recall where and when I bought them but I much prefer the clean sound quality of CDs and I have replaced many of my old LPs with their remastered CD equivalents. If I haven’t, more often than not it is because I’m not that bothered with the record itself. However, like Helga with her books, I would rather that they found a good home rather than being flung out en masse. My thinking is that I will sell those on Ebay that I either have on CD or haven’t bothered with for years and only keep those that are irreplaceable or that I have a particular emotional attachment to.

The only thing with all this Ebay selling is that I am going to have to research the peculiarities of book and record grading. To me it is the content that is important but I’ve noticed that collectors can be right picky sods.