Selfsufficientish.com

One incident at work always sticks in my mind. We were working on some stately home or another when the architect says to us " you must all be very happy to work on places like these , buildings that are your heritage " . One old boy I was working with turned to the architect and replied " this isn't MY heritage , my heritage is back to backs " . Lefft the architect a little put back and he soon changed the subject.
There probably are far too many stately homes saved and the emphasis is always on lord so and so who "built" the place rather than trying to focus more on the craftsmen and women who's skills actually made the place what it is. But that apart the idea of preserving something like back to backs ( which is now happening) does mean that there should be room to keep the ugly , the unloved or the mundane which could be taken as a signal that those old school papers should have been kept.
On a similar note a couple of years ago I worked on a rental property for a guy I've done a fair bit for . The house had been occupied by an old retired miner and he had put down some of his memories. However , the way in which he had "written" this left a little to be desired. Some had been written on half sheets of hardboard , some of it on the walls of the house and some on to carpet tiles. I saved the hardboard , the carpet was wet and starting to rot and the walls had to be stripped although I did photograph it all before hand , all interesting but wholly impractical to keep.

Not sure that Marie Kondo would cope with some of the clearing and tidying in this discussion. Methinks she wouldn't have a clue as to where to start. It's a thought though - how would she do in a stately home? Or a pub renovation where she had to decide what to keep or throw to make something viable commercially?

Another stately home I worked at that needed a bit of de cluttering was Cauke Abbey in Derbyshire . We were told that the former residents used a few rooms until the deteriorating roof started to leak and then just left everything and moved onto other rooms. It didn't help that owners in the past had been avid hunters and liked to stuff whatever they shot . As a result the house was crammed with stuffed animals , birds an fish , many dressed and mounted in human cloths and poses . Very niice if you like that sort of thing . It took the people from the national trust ages to go through everything cataloging every little thing as they went .