Somebody lived with every single thing on this floor

We clear houses, and this is what comes out of them

We buy whole deceased estates and house clearances around the Peninsula — Muizenberg flats, Rondebosch houses, farm cottages out past Philadelphia — and we take the lot rather than picking the good bits and leaving a family to deal with the rest. That is the deal, and it is why the floor looks the way it does: a tea service standing next to a paraffin lamp next to a box of somebody’s cake forks. Between the bakkie and the shelf everything gets washed, polished once, rewired if it plugs in and tested if it lights. That is all. We do not re-silver plate, we do not knock dents out of feet, and we do not strip and repolish a piece to make it look newer than it is, because the wear is the only proof of where a thing has been. Everything is sold as it stands, priced in the shop by the person who unpacked it, and the photograph is of the actual object and not one like it. If it is gone, it is gone, because there was only ever one.