Spring cleaning took on a new twist this year when my grandfather announced that he will do a complete renovation of his 24-year old HDB four-room apartment.

It only dawned on me then that the apartment had seen the coming and going of several life stages – my extended family moved into the unit in the year where I was born; my uncles married and moved out to build their new homes. Over two decades, each child left home to embark on a new phase in their lives, leaving my grandparents behind as guardians of that “place we all grew up in”.

Cupboards were emptied, boxes were hauled out. What amazed me was the objects that have ceased to exist in our everyday lives. I chanced upon our tin water dispenser (it is replaced by plastic flasks now), Hello Kitty collections so poignant of the raging McDonald’s Happy Meals and snaking long queues, my mother’s tailor-made suits from the 70s-80s, old jewellery boxes and hardy plastic suitcases that were probably built to withstand the toughest baggage handling.

I had my own little pieces of history as well – pagers, baggy jeans (oh such embarassment) and the classic Nintendo gameboy. Trends, fads and technology have whirled by our lives so quickly that much have changed in a mere 10 years. How ancient must our elders feel when they look at their grandchildren whizzing past webpages in a series of seemingly random mouse-clicks, or when they spot our glued eyes to the television screen while our fingers deftly manuveur the game controls. It isn’t just about the consoles and TV screens either, my mum had watched with a mixture of confusion and amusement when I set up the drums for Guitar Heroes World Tour in my stay-home attempt to rock on like a rock star.

Beneath that all, there is the excitement of finding all these old stuff in the depths of my storeroom. More discoveries included my play-doh sets, 22 pieces of My Little Pony collection, 5 Barbie Dolls and 1 Ken, silver bangles from my younger days of Indian Dance. The looming question now sits in my mind: Now what? What do I do with them?