The spring clean begins

BEFORE – The spring clean begins

The Spring clean continues

AFTER – The spring clean continues

We continue with our manic sorting, throwing and space finding in advance of the building work beginning. We have temporarily put our Handel collection safely into storage at the British Library which has given us much more space in our archive room for day to day requirements during the construction period including the computer server, school group equipment, shop stock and the odd light bulb or two. We have another storage space locally for non-collection items that we may need from time to time in the coming year. Come September 2015 everything should be happily back in situ housed in a variety of new cupboards and spaces.

We are also disposing of a number of items, which can be a difficult task for people who work in museums. Nonetheless it is amazing what one manages to needlessly accommodate even in a small building like ours. We have decided that three broken fans really don’t need a home here anymore, nor does the over head projector – I am not sure anyone has used one of those since 1988 and as for the, literally, thousands of postcards of images of objects we had in exhibitions over 10 years ago I think it would be a small miracle if those could be given away let alone sold.

Overall we are feeling rather pleased with ourselves. In fact we have become so obsessed with the office clear up it has its own agenda item at our weekly team meetings. It is a bit like having the biggest spring clean ever and is a surprisingly satisfying task. Just to share the joy I thought that you would like to see these before and after photographs. So perhaps our achievements don’t look so impressive in the photos and it is still a bit of a work in progress. But this space is going to become the new entrance corridor into the Hendrix exhibition – promise!

 

Enthusiasm level: Busy bees
Progress: Towards a junkless utopia
Quote: “the camera never lies.”