Wet weather spring clean

The heavens opened and the rain came down. After weeks of searing heat, hot, dry, dusty days that burnt the grass yellow and wilted the plants, the rain arrived. It was Thursday 19 December 2024 and the day chosen to move Chantal’s brother. Luckily it was only a light drizzle to start. We had to go ahead with the move, there was no other time to do it with the festive season bearing down. We had to catch everybody who could help before they set off for their annual holiday. It would have made no difference to change the date anyway because the rain continued to fall.

It has rained well into January 2025. There have been some lighter days, a little bit of sun peaking out from behind the clouds and occasionally enough sun to do the washing and get it dried before the next shower. We live in Johannesburg, South Africa, not the UK. We are not used to this kind of weather, even though we seem to have it more often than not from the second half of December into January.

It can be frustrating to have to spend so much time indoors, especially for families with young children. It’s definitely not good for us to remain sitting in front of screens, which is typically the go-to thing to do in these circumstances. As a nation we are used to being outdoors and take our wonderful weather, which is usually clear and sunny, for granted.

Climate changes

Climate change, you may say. We are not so sure. Climate changes. What do we want instead?

“What is the opposite of climate change?” asked Chantal. “If we want something different what is that called?”

“Climate certainty?” said Matthew with a shrug.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” responded Chantal, slightly exasperated, “We can hardly get an accurate prediction of the weather on a daily basis. I hardly think anything about climate is ever going to be certain.”

What we can be sure of is that the climate changes. What we can also be sure of is that it is impacted by our money-grabbing, growth at all cost, consumerist lifestyles and business practices. This is where we can make a difference. It’s the small steps that each of us can take to have a lightr footprint on our planet.

The planet will survive. It’s been through worse and endured for billions of years. It’s human beings that are at risk. In order for the human race to survive, behaviour change is a requirement. It’s no good thinking we’ll just colonise another planet. We won’t, not in time anyway.

It would be more prudent to do better on the one we already have and inhabit. We may be knee deep in a throw away culture but we can’t throw away our planet that easily. The ease with which people buy and discard, buy and get rid of is alarming. It’s nice to have new things but do they really need them?

Accumulating though life and work

We’re pretty careful about what we purchase but the fact is that some items do need replacing. The daily doing of our lives and work produces an accumulation of paper, utensils, devices and equipment. In the hurly burly of deadlines to meet and more important things to do these things sit around way past their sell by date. They start to fill up the desk, cupboard and drawer space and bring on a mild sense of claustrophobia.

It was this impending sense of being closed in on that drove us to launch into a spring cleaning operation. The word ‘operation’ is used deliberately as starting any cleaning up and clearing away process in our home needs to be tackled very carefully. If left unchecked the house will be turned upside down and inside out. It’s a bit like letting a storm rip the place apart leaving us windswept and choking in its wake. Then it becomes just too overwhelming to deal with the dust, the memories and the letting go. We end up packing it all away again.

As much as throwing things away is easy, letting go can be hard to do. We hold onto things for all kinds of reasons: I’ll need it one day; I may get back to that size; it’s Cailyn’s, Judson’s, Tristan’s grade 0 spring art collection; an old Christmas cracker puzzle that’s lost a piece that I thought I would find but haven’t; bits from old computers and older cameras in case they come in handy to fix; twisted, knotted charger cables – because, who knows, someone might need to charge a Nokia 3210!

A negotiated plan

With a negotiated plan of action, Matthew tackled his side of the office first. Chantal got stuck into her shoe and clothes cupboard. Pruning the shoe cupboard of shoes rarely worn now sad and some peeling with age was a quick and painless exercise. It was easy to clear clothes into the charity box that had obviously shrunk in some wash or were relics from another life, fashion and time.

We met to attend to the office bookcases together, to reconfigure the office space and clear literal inboxes of work completed and waiting to be filed or shredded. Old client files were archived and cupboards cleaned out and repacked. At the end of the day the bucket of water stood grey and lumpy with smeared cleaning cloths, desperate for a cleaning of their own.

“How does so much dust get into a closed cupboard?” sneezed Matthew.

“Does this work? What is it for? Will we use it?” prodded Chantal eager to see more space, less stuff.

There were debates and assessments, decisions and deliberations. It’s more difficult to let go when there is a history or sentimentality attached to an item.

Remember and let go

Part of the clearing gave us pause to reflect nostalgically on what we had done, the places we had visited, and the people we had met. It offered us the opportunity to bring into the light some of our individual histories with their colourful tales. We kept some of these and placed them around the house to tell stories of their own.

Let go we did, of a mountain of stuff. Some things were cleared to the recycling bin, some to the charity bin and, yes, some others were thrown away in the rubbish bin. Although it had been hard and dusty work, it felt like we were entering a different world when we stepped into our office on our first day back at work. With so much old baggage having been moved on, we felt lighter, less weighed down.

While the rain outside continued to soak everything to sopping, we surveyed the change we had made inside. In amongst the cleaning we had navigated a storm of another kind chasing an errant brother up a hill, a story for another day. But by the beginning of the first working week of our year we felt as if the sun was shining lightly on us even as it stayed hidden behind heavy clouds.

Until next time.

Yours in feeling,
Chantal & Matthew

Credits for this issue — Images: Midjourney, 5th Place & EUGENE VERMAAK