"Just throw it in the attic!"

For most, the attic is large filing cabinet for memories and a storage facility for items which we may one day need again. In the houses I've lived in, the attic is a secret compartment that's revealed when you pull a string that's attached to a door that's attached to stairs. When you pull on the string the attic groans distinctively and stairs emerge like a mouth open wide for deliveries.

The attic is a purgatory for items that are either too laden with sentiment to let go of, or those that are undefined in value and necessity. Once an item is relegated to a life in the attic it ceases to exist. It is not until the attic stairs are revealed anew that the item becomes important and coveted once again. You can live without it until it's gone; once it's gone you need it more than ever.

Most attics are an embarrassing mess. The point seems to be to fill them up with stuff worth forgetting or to head up there now and then and make a game out of trying to find something. Since no visitors to the home ever set foot in the attic, the home owner is free to go wild in this part of the house. "Just throw it in the attic!"

The problem is that the attic is the brain of the house. When the brain is all jumbled and stacked up and confused, not to mention weighed down with items that don't matter, the whole house does the heavy lifting. All the energy that the house exerts to hold up the attic could be better spent somewhere else. Not to mention the wasted energy of the inhabitants of the house who have to live with the knowledge of a jungle of forgettable stuff living above them, stacked precariously, patiently and eternally waiting to be set free and given a new lease on life at Goodwill.