The roofer is probably coming next Friday to start re-roofing, so I’m clearing out the loft (or at least attempting to). Amazing how much junk has accumulated up there in spite of my annual spring clean of boxes for equipment we no longer own or is out of warranty. I’m combining this effort with a cataloguing of all my spare leads etc, making sure they are all in labelled bags and those large “Really Useful Boxes” in a logical assortment. A bit OCD, I know, but at least then I don’t go out and buy a new lead only to find out that I already have several of the same item.
Having the usual arguments with the (b)light of my life about throwing things away. She always wants to keep everything. I’m busily pointing out that things like toddler toys are no longer relevant - all our grandkids are past that age, so I want to give them to one of the Charity Shops. Did find 2 large cardboard boxes of Cindy accessories (that’s the UK version of Barbie for our US members), which I now believe are collectors’ items. I’m taking them to our eldest daughter - they were hers, after all. Not to forget all their old board games such as “Escape from Atlantis”.
Now she’s complaining about the ‘dust’ I’m generating, and “where are you going to put all this stuff which you plan to recycle/bin, etc”
Some of the the things haven’t seen the light of day for more than 30 years. I wonder if I can persuade her to let me dispose of all but one of our old corded telephone receivers and a now defunct answering machine. Yep, they’re all sitting in a nice cardboard box up there. I’m not going bother telling her about the Brother Electric Golfball typewriter … I wonder if the Charity Shops will still take those …
Now she’s asking why I want to empty the loft before the roofer comes. Pointing out that tarpaulins can fail leading to wet boxes etc just isn’t managing to persuade her (yet).
No, I’m afraid. I sold my old Nait 1 to a hifi shop assistant many years ago. I’d taken it along to Superfi when I was trying to pick a centre speaker to go with the Royds I was using at the time. He was VERY impressed by it, and is now a Naim dealer himself in Derby.
The Nait 2 (used to belong to one of my daughters) has long since been passed on to “the opposition” (or the “Out-laws” - i.e. my younger son-in-laws parents)
However, I did find a Sagem PVR and a Panasonic S-VHS recorder hiding under some Naim boxes. Haven’t found the box of blank cassettes I thought I still had up there, though.
@Dungassin You have my empathy, we had to clear the loft a few years ago to move house after occupying our old place for over 29 years, it took many days of passing stuff back down through the hatch. I only stopped when the missus, (the catcher) told me to stop because there was no more room downstairs to put the stream of stuff.
Our new place came with a warning not to load up the roof space or void the warranty, so we have been good so far, no stuff in the loft!
My only regret was not recognising that some stuff was worth money on the ‘vintage market’ and at first we threw lots of things away. We later switched to shifting stuff on Gumtree and pocketed well over £1000 from old stuff. We met some weird and … no just weird people along the way, with all but one of them quite pleasant enough. Our weirdest sale (not from the loft) was our gas oven and hob, it was still hot from cooking our evening meal when we had a surprise visit from a very keen purchaser. To my amazement, they packed it into their family car despite my concern that hot grease might leak out! But it had to go!
We moved house last July. On moving day i was very much at the helm of what was going into the “new” home and everything else would go into the garage. Working a system of Do we still use it, if not sell it and then if they failed charity or rubbish. A lot went in the garage, including the wife
It took my wife and i a long time to clear out the old loft. Amazing what “crap” we had and i guess because it was out of sight, out of mind!
Now, the new garage is a grave yard of 25+ years of stuff. I have been out there shredding old bits of paper and going through boxes. I am now at the point of selling. I keep telling myself now is not the right time due to obvious reasons…not really its me just being lazy!!
Where do you guys sell stuff, not just old HiFi but anything?
The first thing I did when we moved into this house 39 years ago was to install a proper floor for the loft (except the narrow bits right under the eaves). Makes it much easier and no worries about putting a foot through the ceiling.
Our loft stayed untouched until a few years ago until I thought it would make our electricians life easier if I cleared it out before he installed my dedicated radial. So satisfying to get rid of all the crap and just a few boxes up there now. Although i like to post the odd picture or two, I’ll refrain in this instance…
My intention after the roof is done is to only keep the boxes for the hifi, DVD cases (I keep the discs in paper sleeves in my study), boxes for my guitar effects pedals and Marshall combo amp (in case I want to sell them), and my CDs. Also the boxes with sundry spare leads etc. Plus (of course) anything SWMBO insists on keeping. Probably won’t work that way, though …
The roofer is removing our chimney when he does the roof, the TV and FM aerials will have to be resited on the side of the house. He persuaded me that having a pole through the roof increased the potential for leaks. I should point out that I know him well, and he is a friend.
Dusty, we’ve had reasonable results using Gumtree.
I absolutely loathe going to the tip and have found that if you advertise stuff, even junk on Gumtree for free it will go within hours.
Using this method I recently got rid of a lawn mower that literally caught fire whilst using it, same for an old Dyson that had an acrid burning smell. Last weekend I advertised for free some grotty paving slabs, edging stones and an old parasol base. Advertised at lunchtime, gone by dinner time!
It’s so much better than it ending up in landfill and nice that somebody sees some worth in stuff you no longer need.
We had a structural engineer come round to measure up for a drawing and calculation he was going to do for a steel beam to replace a supporting wall that I wanted to remove.
As he was nearly finished he asked my wife whether we kept anything in the loft. She said we did, so he went up the ladder, turned on the light and still standing on the ladder looked around. He said “oh dear, oh dear, oh dear”.
A civil engineer friend looked at the resulting calculation for the beam and said it was “well over-engineered”.
I have asked my grown up daughters to take away their old stuff from the loft and got the reply “Don’t worry dad. We will do that after you are dead”.
Moving the TV and radio aerials off the Chimney is a good idea, they were never designed with this purpose in mind. Even better removing the chimney as you have said you are, silly things now that most of us don’t light fires. It amuses me when they plonk fake ones on new builds, stop with the chimneys!
Ours isn’t even a proper chimney now. A long time ago a gale blew down our Ron Smith aerial, taking the chimney with it and demolishing our neighbour’s car! The lower rebuild is more decorative than anything else, and certainly isn’t compatible with having a solid fuel or gas fire in the hearth in the living room. We have an electric fire installed there (SWMBO uses it occasionally in the winter), and 10 years ago I came down in the morning to a loud noise in the living room. Traced it to the fireplace, and pulled out the fire to release a starling into our living room. It flew out of the open living room window very rapidly. After that I got the chimney blocked off at the top end - so no point in keeping it now.
I’m trying to figure out where my Naim CD player is - I think it was a 3.5 but not certain, which in itself is pretty surprising, but perhaps shows how much I loathed CD all those years ago.
If it was in the loft did the builders take a fancy to it, if not where on earth is it?
Storage unit perhaps in a locked filing cabinet - naturally I’ve lost the key…
My loft is full of boxes and old gadgets. We needed work on the flues in the loft after internal divider bricks came down the chimney one stormy day.
As part of some renovation the chap who installed ethernet in several rooms stuck a new TV aerial in the loft not outside - seems ok, not sure how much an external one would be better these days?
“As part of some renovation, the chap who installed ethernet in several rooms stuck a new TV aerial in the loft not outside - seems ok, not sure how much an external one would be better these days?”
Interesting question, the signal loss could be 50% or more by putting the TV aerial in the loft, of course, it depends on your roof construction, and on how good your signal strength is as to whether this might be an issue. My father in law’s house was in direct line of sight of Sutton Coldfield transmitter, (a powerful transmitter) he could get a good TV signal using the proverbial ‘piece of wet string’.
Some might say, “well its digital, as long as it works without corrupting the sound and image its good to go”. Now let me see, would others agree if we were discussing digital audio?
