Decluttering.

I have been going through my wardrobe, selecting clothes which I know I will never wear again. When I retired from teaching, I got rid of a whole host of formal clothing: smart suits which would have no place in my new life as a lady of leisure. And yet, some still hung around in the wardrobe, hiding behind other garments. And now there is another bag full of stuff to go to the charity shop.

I have a friend who claims she goes through her wardrobe every two years, ruthlessly throwing out anything she has not worn in that time. If that is true, how very admirable! But I don't think she tells the whole truth. Besides, there are clothes you only wear once in a blue moon. Does such a rule apply more to women than men? If that were not so, then Phil's suits would be thrown out on a regular basis, only to have to be replaced whenever a wedding or a funeral comes along!

There is something quite therapeutic about going through your stuff in this way. Proust might have had his madeleine buns to evoke old memories, but there is nothing quite like rediscovering an outfit that you bought for a specific occasion to make all the old atmosphere rush back into your head. Okay, I exaggerate a little but there is a grain of truth in it.

Then there is the size question. I don't just mean how pleasing it is to find that you can still fit into something that you last wore ten years ago. No, it's the odd discrepancy between what was, for example, a size 12 ten years back and what is a size twelve now. Have they become bigger to con ladies into thinking they are one step closer to the desired size zero? I have no proof of any of this but my memory tells me that a size 12 used to have a 24 inch waist. Such a waist does not exist except amongst the skinniest these days. Has body shape changed as well?

Now that I have decluttered (to some extent) the wardrobe, I need to set about other areas as well. There are all the books: far too many of them! In some cases we have more than one copy of the same book. This may be because both Phil and I have bought it within days without telling each other. Sometimes I have read the blurb on a book cover, skimmed the first few pages and bought it on impulse, only to discover three chapters in that I have already read it and that there is a copy on the bookshelf. On top of that, Phil loves a good hardback (perhaps nostalgia for the books aunts and uncles bought for us children of the postwar age as Christmas and birthday presents) and so we have hardback copies of books that already exist as well thumbed paperbacks on our bookshelves.

A bit of ruthlessness is called for!

Putting stuff away in the kitchen after a big family meal yesterday, I decided that that is another area that needs some care and attention. Plates and bowls, cups and saucers, dishes and platters that never see the light of day. They have to go! Whatever happened to the young couple who had to scratch around to have enough place settings to invite the in-laws to tea?

It must be a genetic thing as well. Ever since our eldest granddaughter has been working - in her first "proper" job - she has been buying stuff. Our daughter says that barely a day goes by without a parcel arriving for the new spendthrift: clothes, books, collectable items!

She is storing up decluttering work for the future!