How do we end up with a whitegoods cemetery in the first place?
So much has to do with advertising. We are seduced into believing life will be so much easier, faster, cheaper and healthier if we bake our own bread and make fresh juice every morning.
In the perfect world this would be great. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
The reality is that once you get the juicer and breadmaker home, you don’t have someone to make the juice or bake the bread, you’re doing all the work and cleaning up afterwards. Fiddly, time-consuming gadgets lose their shine very quickly.
Cleaning pulp out of the mesh of the juicer can take ages and bread is eaten in most households daily, so that’s a lot of baking to be done. For most families, the one thing they don’t have a lot of is time, so anything that creates more work, gets relegated to the back of the cupboard.
Hence, the beginning of the whitegoods cemetery!
Of course this isn’t the only way to collect an array of miscellaneous gadgets. Presents like hot dog makers and chocolate fondue sets add to the problem. These sorts of items make cheap, fun, novelty gifts, which is great if you are the giver. However if you are the receiver I’m guessing the novelty value has worn off after the first month and they gather dust at the back of the cupboard.
A good way to prevent this happening is to let people know you are short of space so a voucher may be a better option.
If it’s too late and you already have an oversupply of gadgets, here are a few ways to lighten the load.
- Write the date on the item and write a date in your diary for six months on. If you haven’t used the item in that time, donate it to a charity that could use it.
- Give the items to your day care centre. Milkshake makers or pie makers may be very useful if lunch is provided.
- Consider sharing white goods with your playgroup. Each person in the group may want to use the item for a while and when they don’t want it anymore, they could pass it on to the next person.
- Only keep gadgets that are multi-purpose. Consider a blender as a better option than a milkshake maker. A large pie tin is better than a pie maker as you use less pastry, and eat more filling. And you can always boil a hot dog in a saucepan, and melt chocolate the same way.
Novelty items are fun occasionally, but is it worth storing something in your cupboard that only comes out once a year? The reality is there are many ways to enjoy the same thing without owning the fancy gadget.
As a rule only keep what you use on a regular basis and that way your cupboards won’t be stuffed to the brim with items that belong in the cemetery.