I have never thought of myself as a hoarder. It creeps up on a person. Nearly thirty years in the same house and who doesn’t have a stack of who knows what under the bed?

The problem with stuff, lots of stuff, is that sooner or later you have to reckon with it. The carpet fitters are coming in which means all of the furniture will need to be moved about, which in turn means all the stuff lying about and inside the large pieces of furniture will need to move.

The obvious answer is to take this opportunity to throw out a whole load.

Faced with this challenge, my partner is moving at glacial speed through the files that cover every single shelf, wall and floor in our smallest room upstairs. A few years back, faced with the same challenge he managed just two files and carried a betrayed look on his face for at least a month. It got so bad that I offered to clear my files first, only to realise that of the hundreds stashed in the room, only two were mine. Paperwork has never been my weakness.

Meanwhile I’ve made six trips to the tip, most unwisely one on the weekend when everyone and their dog seems determined to empty their dumpy bags full of garden waste.

The surprise is how much bedding we seem to have accumulated. There really is no reason for more than two sets, one to wash and the other to ‘wear’ and yet it would seem that in nearly thirty years, I have never thrown a single sheet out.

Ho hum.

Where stuff cannot be thrown away (basically because it’s not mine and he just cannot deal) then it’s been put in plastic boxes in the garage. Why not the loft? Because the loft is already as full as can be obviously and out of sight, up a loft ladder means that stuff will still be there when we die. At least in the garage, the stuff is visible and one step closer to the tip.

My daughter came home (from her house two streets away) and finally cleared her room. The childhood globe was regretfully put into the tip pile alongside her school artwork. Her memory box was apparently too large for her house (seriously?) so is now located in my garage waiting for space to appear in their loft. If it ever gets there, it too will no doubt languish until the grandkids (God-willing) are left to deal with the house clearance.

Having put the carpet fitting into the diary for the wrong week (one week early) we are now almost ready for them to arrive, next week.

Now about that naked photo in the bedroom….