Holiday Clean Up

It all began when we bought some Christmas lights to put in the front yard... but the garden was overgrown with trees making it difficult to place the lights. So, the garden needed trimming.

In preparation Leigh ordered a super skip (a giant steel container to store rubbish). Of course, it needed filling - and it's the holidays - so what began as a simple garden clean up became Operation Landscaping.

So now we have a totally re-landscaped front yard, sans trees and with brand new wood chip mulch. It looks great, but now we're in the clean up mood and the attention has shifted to the garage where I have a lifetime of junk/toys/memorabilia stored.

I decided that it was about time to be ruthless and throw away/donate stuff that I haven't looked at for years. So I mercilessly culled out all of my Edge computer magazines and Wired magazines (I kept the first ten issues of each), I even threw out old magazines that had the slightest mention of games that I had worked on (I had a lot), and even bundled up a bunch of toys, comics and books for charity.

As you can tell I'm a bit of a hoarder and for some reason I tend to keep old toy and game boxes. Yes, that's right boxes. Empty boxes. It was time to let go and throw them out.

I finally threw out my Imperial Attack Base toy box that I had (for some strange reason) hoarded for the last 20 plus years. I'd most of the toy years ago so I threw the rest out too.

But don't worry - I've kept all of my toys that are still in blister packs including Star Wars action figures, original Ninja Turtle toys, The Simpsons figures, Star Trek figures and a whole bunch of other whacky toys I've picked up over the years.

I'm keeping these for the day when I can give them to my kids and watch them rip them open and play with them as they were meant to be played with!

But I did decide to keep one empty box... the original Japanese Playstation package. I really like the box design, it's so simple for a games machine that changed the world.

Original Japanese PSX Box (front)

Original Japanese PSX Box (back)

Well, it's time to clean up my home office, but before I go - if you haven't played Puzzle Quest yet then head over to Big Fish Games - they have a special offer on until the end of the month where it's 40% off all games. So you can pick up Puzzle Quest on PC for USD $12! What a bargain!!!

www.passfieldgames.com