Certain members of this family are obsessed with repacking, reorganising, rearranging, clearing out and decluttering. I can't say it's a bad thing, but I get dragged along to make the final decisions - usually when I am about to take a Sunday afternoon snooze. We opened the drawers and doors for the umpteenth time today, to once again decide what to do with 40 years of accumulation of stuff. What do you do with the VHS tapes ( F1 Last Race 1995, Senna Tribute, Austin Powers, Ducktales, Superbikes 1997) - about 40 of those, none seen for a few decades. Two shoeboxes of music tapes, all pirated at the time - I listened to some and they are still perfect to play in the LP/CD/Radio/Tape player/recorder I bought at Christmas, so perhaps a few will survive the throw-out. Tiny tapes from the Sony Camcorder, which cost R7 000 many years ago and was almost instantly replaced by cell phones.
New devices are being launched continually, and what we have this year may not be used next year. It seems that we are in an uncontrollable spiralling of throwaway consumerism with treasured memories stored on obsolete technology consigned to landfill. There must be mountains of old tapes all over the world, closely followed by computer towers, screens, laptops, video game consoles, cell phones and SIM cards!
Perhaps we can melt them all into big lumps and send them off into space on a mission to see how far they go? I don't think there are any particularly sensible options currently being offered.
I've kept the board games. Somehow the physical interaction seems so much more attractive than a screen version and if the lights go out (worldwide - not an impossibility), entertainment would still exist at a 60s and 70s level.
It may be that the best storage for memories is in our hearts and minds. Once we are gone, there is nobody who will need our memories - they will have their own.
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