For one reason or another I have ended up being in lots of my friends lofts recently. One of them was to help clear their mothers loft out as she was moving, another to get my friends camping things down before we headed off to a festival and lastly my friend was moving into a new house and we were putting things in the loft.
It made me think what an unusual storage space it is and how different each one is. My friend’s mother was the neatest, cleanest most well organised lady I know, her house is spotless. However her loft was another matter. It was a mess; there were bits of paper all over the place from when her two sons were at school, their old books and paintings they had once done. She had old clothes just flung in there. But there were some real treasures there as well. She is quite an elderly lady in her late 70’s and we found her old typewriter and television, also a beautiful box of records from her late husband. The thing I found most interesting was the state of the loft, everything had just been thrown up there completely sporadically, something I did not expect from such a well organised and tidy lady. It was almost like her little secret, I’m fairly sure she apologised at one point for the mess.
My other friend however whose camping equipment we were getting is the antithesis of my friend’s mother. He struggles to organise his life, forgets about works, is never in one place for very long generally very dis-organised. Don’t get me wrong great guy very clever, but just struggles with keeping things organised. Except however, you have probably already guessed, his loft. It is so well organised, everything in boxes labelled with items used more often at the front, it has a light and he knows exactly what’s where. It’s fantastic. But I guess with him moving around a lot that part of his life is kept in boxes and needs to be organised.
Anyway the point of all this made me think, my close friends and family I know everything about them, been in every room in their house, into most cupboards at some point but never in their lofts. Over the next couple of weeks of the summer holidays I am going to see how many lofts/attics of my friends I can get into. I will photograph them and describe their life style, whether they are organised/dis-organised, clean/dirty, tidy/untidy and we can see how their lofts correspond with their lifestyle.
Rosie x
Everything's Rosie 