GrumbleSmiles

I’ve found another draw full of socks! Bringing my total sock collection to 67 pairs.

It’s time to look on excess socks as an opportunity to save the world.

If I wear a different pair every day throughout the rest of the winter there will be no need to wash them until the Spring when the weather is better. Then one big dolly tub wash and hang them on the line. No need for electricity. Probably saving 600 megawatts of energy 😀

Now in the Spring I could echo that with summer shirts of which I must have at least 55 including tee shirts. Ending in a harvest festival mass shirt wash in September. Followed by several lines of shirt drying and another mass of megawatts saved,

Now if I can just get mass sock and shirt washing to go viral we would be well on the way to nett zero !

My last post complained about the mountain of paper that you accumulate in a lifetime. It’s an Everest !

But, of course there is a modern way of dealing with it. Just do all your business on line. The much heralded paperless office.

Put it all up in the clouds. No filing cabinets. No shredders. No waste paper bins full of paper. No bins. No offices, now we are all working from home. Magic ! Why didn’t I think of that before ?

Just a few unanswered questions ????? :——

• Where do they send all the ‘junk mail” ? I suppose it could go on-line too. But then the Royal Mail will probably go out of business.
• What about all the astute techie scammers lurking in the clouds ?. They will be reading all my mail, searching for an opportunity to con me about something.
• What if there is no need for a recycling bin collection anymore ? That may put half the bin men out of work.
• Will we just have to ignore some people – especially older people – who are not on-line ? The banks won’t mind, they are trying to do that anyway. The Government might realise too late that older people vote, although the opposition parties may be happy to disenfranchise them.
• What happens to your annual tax return ? If you can’t / won’t do it on-line, the tax man will fine you £100 a day until you give in or go to jail. Then the prisons will be full and the Government will lose a lot of revenue.
• How about when the next census is due ? People with no paper forms will cease to exist and the population of the UK will decline to less than 50 million. That will open the door to more immigration, provided they can use a smart phone to apply for a visa.

Who would have thought that getting rid of all that paper might have so many consequences?

On the upside we may still have an Amazon rain forest 🤡

In my seemingly endless pursuit of decluttering I have had several attempts at “desocking”, but without much success. However many socks I get rid of, I still accumulate more. It doesn’t help that my brother-in-law used to dye socks by the dozen, and each Christmas would present me with a great collection of new socks. Not that I was ungrateful, they were the very best you could get and I loved them! Fortunately he has now retired and that particular sock source has dried up.

Still it’s the case that only centipedes need the number of socks that I have !

At the last count I still have 46 pairs of socks. Not enough for a centipede, but rather too many for me. Two drawers full of nothing but socks.

So what’s to be done ?

• First, resolve to never buy any more socks.
• Second, I could keep the rest until they wear out. Unfortunately I suspect my socks would outlast me.

I hate paperwork and yet I don’t seem able to get rid of it. I have had numerous decluttering attempts over the last few years. I have shredded it until my shredder gave up. I have burned it in an incinerator bin in the garden, until the neighbours complained. I have torn it up by hand before throwing it in the recycling bin.

However no matter how hard I try to get rid of it, more seems to arrive to replace it. It’s a relentless paper blizzard. Perhaps I should give it a name like “ Storm Paper-chase ”.

Where does it all come from? Most of it is unsolicited, in other words I didn’t ask for it, it just turned up one day. Letters suggesting I might want to buy some totally new product at a one time bargin price. Or invitations to sell my house, or insulate it, or paint it, or reroof it.

Next there is the true “ junk mail “. Stuff I would never buy. Glossy brochures with no prices. All directed to me by a poorly crafted data base, hopelessly fishing for a bite. Often addressed to “ the occupier”, as if I am a squatter in my own home. All this stuff can go straight in the bin.

So what’s the answer? Perhaps I should be more positive 😀 learn to love paper, even encourage more by ticking every box that suggests you’re interested in receiving more information. That will keep the post office in business.

Roll it up into little flammable paper balls stored in what used to be the coal shed. The in the cold winter nights have a fire in chimney grate like they did in the old days.

Just don’t tell the climate change people!!!!!!!!