My Best Friend or My Greatest Foe

Who said Imbolc was a time to live the old adage of 'out with the old and in with the new'?

There's something - well, a lot of somethings, actually - that I have been holding onto for some time. OK, hoarding might be a more appropriate word. And I know there's always a great reason why we keep this or could never get rid of that, but, seriously, even I have to admit that this particular collection has gotten more than a little bit out of hand.

I have three children who are currently 9, 7 and 3 years old and I have kept virtually every bit of "artwork" that they have ever done. You may notice that I put the word artwork in inverted commas, and not because I verbalised the word as I was writing it, thereby making it a quote, which I decided to reflect in written form, but because I wished to convey a sense of irony as the use of the word artwork in that sentence actually referred to every bit of paper, scrap cardboard and tissue on which my children have ever left a mark with pencil, pen, texta, paint or other unidentifiable medium commonly made available to children in the home or other various care, recreation and education facilities.

If you're not already bamboozled by the questionable grammatical prowess of the previous paragraph and are still following, or, contrarily, are undeniably bamboozled by the previous paragraph but have decided to forge ahead regardless in the hope that a summary would be forthcoming, then soon you shall be delivered with sweet relief. The point I am getting to is that I now have eight archive boxes literally overflowing with stuff and I need to either decide to allow my obsessive compulsive behaviour to continue or I need to bite the bullet and throw out some of the works that have been created by the growing hands of my dear children from the first moments of them discovering what crayons do to paper, to the first faces they could form, the suns and scenery that then developed, their first rainbows, right up to the bloody dragon versus machine versus alien wars and intricate castle and maze structure that now grace most of the pages. I think that last sentence serves to highlight the depth of my little personality quirk somewhat, wouldn't you agree?

I know what has to be done, but can I do it? This is my current focus of procrastination, if procrastination can indeed have a focus, as such.

Tomorrow seems like a good day for it, don't you think? Yes! As did Monday, Tuesday and the second half of today, but it still didn't seem to happen. Well, I make no promises but all I can tell you is that it will be hard to do, no matter when I do it. I have decided to cull some of it at least; all of the certificates and awards etc are separate and will be kept, of course, and I'm fine to keep some of the more "special" pictures (that was emphasis, not irony this time) but it's going to take a lot of time to get through all of the boxes and the recycled garbage man could end up as either my best friend or my greatest foe. Wish me luck, people!