Making some progress with getting sorted

I finally got round to asking a neighbour, who is also a professional gardener, if they would give me a quote for clearing my front garden.  It has been pretty deserted for about 9 years now and is a complete mess with small trees growing in the lawn.  It would be so great to feel as though I have a bit of control over at least that part of my world.  I just want it cleared and a new lawn laid as I should be able to manage to mow that if I get a decent mower.  The lawn area wouldn't be too big either.

If I finally start to get that sorted out then I would have to get around to sorting out some of the other things that seem to evade my attempts at control.  I seem to endlessly move things around, and although I do have occasional throw outs it never seems to have much of an impact.

Of course one of the problems is that I feel guilty about getting rid of things, especially having been raised by parents who seemed to have the motto of "keep it, it might come in useful".  I have been slowly weeding things out and taking books down to the Community Centre in the town, or to the local Oxfam shop which specialises in books; and I did make a long list to sell on Amazon, but I got no further with that.  I don't really want to let them go.

I do feel that getting rid of clutter is quite liberating, but I also look at it from an environmental standpoint at well.  These things should be reused, but who would want my old stuff.  With clothes, at least, a charity can sell them for rags if they are not good enough to sell as an item of clothing and I would much rather things were used again than go to landfill.  I can be a rather obsessive recycler at home, and I also end up redirecting rubbish at work if it can be recycled.  I have even been known to bring it home to put in my own recycling bin.

Humans have had such an enormous impact on the world.  What people think of as being a natural landscape has most often been influenced or created by humans.  There is no where in Britain that is really natural, and the area that I live in is completely formed by human use, and over use, of the land.  Why do people think that they have the right to continue to abuse this planet?  Do we really need a lot of the things that we have.  Do we really need a lot of the things we want.  For me life should be about having the things you need, and occasionally having the things that you want.  I still have the 'fridge that my parents bought around the time my older brother was born and furniture my father owned in the 1920's and 1930's.  I have photos of houses he had decades before I was born and I still have some of those pieces.  I don't need this year's in colour for a sofa after all; and let's face it a 1950's style 'fridge is actually very fashionable.  Keep it long enough and it will come back into vogue.