Are you in the club?

I’m posting and archiving intriguing stuff found in my Dad’s sheds.

Dead Dads Shed Club is a small place to celebrate these unique worlds of our loved ones and in a small way preserve them, these curated extensions of their personalities, their quirks and idiosyncrasies.  Frequently retreated to as a  sanctuary,  for a side hustle,  or  a hobby that took them away from the detail of the every day. Sheds can, over time, map the spread of life’s intentions and responsibilities, as lives evolve, families grow and new decades enetered.

But what happens to these sheds and their contents when the owner passes away?

The sheds

The average family will have the one or maybe two sheds, but what if these sheds, overtime quietly multiply, one becomes three, three becomes six,  six becomes 12. And what if their practical use dissolved, and their insides  swelled  with stuff that heaved against door frames,  pushed towards ceilings and reduced windows to small chinks of sunlight? And then what if, after 34 years of building, using, and filling these 12 sheds, your Dad, passes away?

For a few years these 12 sheds stood, as he had left them, simultaneously a comfort and a curse.

When the time felt right to start tackling this lifetime’s collection, each shed started to unravel and reveal themselves in unique ways. Each shed and it;s collective items, once turned out and unpicked from their place that my late Father had left them,   began to throw up unexpected items.

Sometimes the most intriguing things were not the big shiny items but the small ones that felt like they had rolled out from a crack in history. I hope to post and archive a few here, lay down any memories they stirred and anything I found out along the way.

So let’s head into the sheds…