Being Overly Dram-attic: My Loft may be the Portal to Hell

I’m standing in my loft again. Surveying. Wondering how exactly we got to this point.

Despairing of my materialistic, capitalist tendencies to purchase excessive amounts of unnecessary goods and then satisfying the hoarding beast in me, by keeping hold of practically everything for all sorts of emergencies that haven’t even been invented yet. I feel like I’m about to plagiarise a Michael MacIntyre sketch*, but I’m pretty sure I have everything in this odd shaped room that would satisfy nobody’s requirements. Half burnt candles, wire hangers from the dry cleaners that are bent out of shape, lids to storage boxes (the bases have long since disappeared) and used ink cartridges from a printer we owned 3 printers ago. And that’s just the tip of a rather shit iceberg.

I’m fairly lucky, in that my loft has been fully boarded out, plastered, painted and has some lovely Velux windows which are home to at least 3000 spiders. And whilst it’s never going to get an official “room” seal of approval from the building regulators, it still “could” be a perfectly useable space. Sure you’ve got to navigate to it up the sliding wooden ladder that remains permanently down, blocking the landing and providing a frequent toe stubbing obstacle. It remains down, not out of laziness but due to the fact that our fluffy cats have made the loft their domain. So not only is the loft continually filled with discarded belongings, it’s all covered in a generous amount of cat hair and if we’re really lucky, a pile of thrown up fur ball - usually in a dark corner where I’ll inevitably stand, in bare feet of course.

We had such grand plans. A little reading nook where the discarded IKEA Kallax (as I understand it, a government mandated piece of furniture for all UK homes) collects  all the books we’ve read, loved and vowed to read again. And all the books we’ve vowed to read and haven’t even opened the front cover of. A fairly cheap armchair, originally brought for the spare room, positioned over an inexpensive rug and in front of the old living room TV. An old coffee table from the OH’s very distant past and I think I’m seeing a theme emerging. If it’s old, and very possibly broken, up it goes to the loft. I probably need to consider migrating up there permanently soon myself, if that’s the criteria.

If this cute vision of a reading nook was what we created, then perhaps it would be ok. More frequently used certainly. But no. We’ve decided to add to the ambience by randomly throwing any old thing up there (and I know this is what 99% of those of us with lofts do - it’s an ancient rite, passed down from parent to child, along with stories of mouldy bags of cuddly toys, feet through ceilings and heat. Oh the heat). In ours, there is the huge pile of stuff that used to be certified loft tenants but we’ve since decided to finally evict them. But they haven’t been evicted yet - no - they have instead been moved to the exit lounge of the loft (right by the hatch - constantly in my eye-line). There they wait, gathering dust and generally getting in the way; pining for either the trip to the dump, the charity shop or for me to get off my arse and place a million items of clothing on Vinted.

There’s the two guitars that also gather dust and are never played; an iMac - a thing of beauty - sat forlornly on a desk waiting for me to start editing photos again and now hardly visible through piles of old documents that need to be shredded; boxes from new gadgets that we definitely need to keep in case we need to return them in 67 years time (and on that point, why do I find it so difficult to throw out old iPhone boxes??). There’s a hastily put up pole, with bags of clothes hanging from it - clothes I assume have been deemed worthy of keeping as I’m sure they’ll fit me again one day - and will obviously still be in fashion… Two eaves, blocked in with one small door on each side, stacked full of boxes labelled “old Christmas”, “new Xmas”, “Halloween”, “wedding”, “mementos” and god knows what else. Bags of hiking clothes, board games never played, spare duvets, every single sized suitcase you could probably want, boxes of old crockery, cups, DVDs, CD’s and for whatever reason, empty bottles of champagne, gin and wine that I’m sure have significance, but I’m 45 now and I’m lucky if I can remember what I drunk last week at the pub, let alone 23 years ago.

Nestled in the corner is Mount Doom. A pile of something (I can’t bear to investigate) in boxes, strategically covered in three blankets that our little girl cat, Ursula, has claimed as her own. Sleeping and resting there - sometimes for 25 hours a day - and ALWAYS when’s it’s 30 degrees outside - it’s her lofty turret from which she can watch you with a critical (some might say evil) glare. And when I say “some”, I mean me.

Let’s not forget the washing either - in various stages of the cleaning cycle. Because we live in a small house in Britain, we need to find somewhere to hang up wet washing. So the loft also doubles as some kind of cheap ass laundrette, where clothes go unclaimed for weeks because neither me of the OH can be bothered to bring it all down. Fold it. Put it away. Urghhhhhh - I have more fun things to do with my life! (Also note the absence of “iron” in this list. I don’t iron. I buy things with Lycra in them and hang them instead of folding awkwardly over airers. Life is too short to iron). But whilst I’m here, can I take a moment to recognise the electric heated airer? It has revolutionised our drying activities - as well as helping maintain the tropical environment in the loft that Ursula demands.

This is just the tip of a rather chaotic iceberg - and I do know we’re not alone. I remember my parents loft, with its randomly placed hatch in the bathroom, where the roof pitched at an improbably angle meaning you had to have the agility of a bendy gymnast to haul yourself into it. Not that I ever did. Unboarded lofts with their itchy insulation poking from every crevice, the dark corners filled with every type of creepy crawly and the ever present danger of ending up in your bedroom if you didn’t keep you feet strategically on the beams meant it wasn’t a place I ever really wanted to go. I did however enjoy trawling through whatever boxes were routinely ejected from it - questioning my parents about mementos from years gone by or laughing (regretfully now) at some ludicrous 70’s furniture that were later unceremoniously deposited at the dump (sacrilege). I can’t imagine that anyone is going to get quite the same joy from my loft contents.

So once again, after surveying the chaos, mentally reprimanding myself for the over consumption of the west, and moving one small pile of crap from one area to another, I vow to use a rainy autumnal weekend to come and tackle this nightmare. After all, it’s not like we really need to use the room anytime soon. And Ursula isn’t complaining. Shedding yes, but not complaining.

*”the man drawer” - if you’ve never watched this stand up clip, find it and marvel at a well observed piece of comedy