Time For A Clear-Out

It’s time for a spring-clean and a rethink of what goes and what stays at Liz Shankland’s new smallholding.

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I inherited the hoarding gene from my Nan. Her mantra was drummed into me from an early age: “If you keep something long enough, it’ll come in handy.” Consequently, I grew up stashing away lots of stuff – some useful, some definitely not – ‘just in case’.

Hoarding is all very well when you’re planning to stay put for a while but, when a human squirrel decides to move house, it either means a logistical nightmare or a massive clear-out. Once the sale of my last smallholding was agreed, the buyers started putting pressure on to get the move under way and so, even though I did manage to sell a lot of stuff and give lots more to the local charity shops, I decided to take ridiculous amount of items with me, ‘just in case’.

The list ranged from the purely practical – pig arks, calf shelters, spare galvanised gates, sheep hurdles, rolls of barbed wire, and Heras fencing – to the kind of things my Nan would have recommended I hung onto, such as tools in need of repair, old plastic heating oil tanks, and boxes and boxes of assorted plumbing joints. Inevitably, when I took up residence at my new place in Carmarthenshire, the yard surrounding the house was quickly transformed into a Steptoe’s Yard, full of ugly, bulky objects I might never use.