Keep, chuck OR CRAVE!

Michèle's clean-up unearths a mystery box and an angry horde

Last year it was The Garden Shed, this year it’s The Cupboard Under The Stairs. No, these are not titles for a cautionary children’s tale or low-key horror movie. This, friends, is my latest clear-out project.

These late spring cleans are motivated by our local council’s free pick-up of inorganic rubbish. For those of us who don’t have mates’ trailers to borrow for a trip to the dump, this is our way of annually shifting the stuff too big for the weekly bin.

Our latest pile started with a TV aerial – long since defunct – which blew off our roof in the last big wind, and a rusted garden table.

Some of what ends up at each household’s gate will be recycled at the council depot. Some of it won’t even make it to the depot – there is a healthy tradition of foraging amongst the curbside piles, taking away treasure someone else has deemed trash.