The Storm Before the Calm...

Husband and I have a number of things in common.

- Our mothers are Glaswegians

- We like going to Support Group meetings

- Travel is our big passion

 - We prefer life to be calm.

However, as a result of us placing travel before almost everything else we spend our money on, we have ended up with a carpet which has become embarrassingly threadbare. Only now - when it has got to the point we don't want our friends to see it - have we taken the plunge and ordered a new one. And if matters were only that simple, we would both be content. But they aren't.

Because all the furniture has to be moved. And all the things on the floor. And the piles of books. And the clothes I have left hanging on the side of the wardrobe. And moving things exposing other things - like a wall which needs painting, and a box of Christmas wrapping paper, and the "spare" vacuum cleaner. And so we have embarked on A Massive Clear Out.

This is where Husband and I part company.

Husband can airily seize a bin bag and throw half his possessions into it without turning a hair; whereas I have a neurotic inability to discard anything, particularly if it cost over a tenner.

Husband is well aware of this mental block, once asking me how many dressing gowns I owned; and when I confessed to having 4, said "I want you to repeat after me. 'My name is Katharine and I am a hoarder'...."

He offers to "help" me throw things away, which leads to me saying "no, no, go away, I can do it if you just leave me alone to mentally prepare myself..."

It takes me a day and a half to achieve this, but when I finally click into "Discard" mode, I am considerably better at it than I have anticipated. I do exactly what they suggest in women's magazines, dividing clothes into "chuck", "charity shop", and "not too sure about" piles. Better still, I immediately start taking them out of the flat, rather than leaving them there overnight where I might start ferreting through them again.

We shred kilos of paper, old bills, emails pertaining to work, projects which have been left half-completed. And I neatly pack the things I want to keep into boxes. Goddammit, I even stick neatly written labels onto the front of them !! And Husband manages to paint the living room and gloss the radiator. Everything is in total chaos, and the air is blue with bad language as we both bark our shins hourly on bits of furniture which have been shifted to unfamiliar locations. We are just hanging onto the thought that in a week's time, when the new carpet is down, things will be calm again.

It's a small flat and we have hardly any storage space. I have never really accepted this reality; instead collecting possessions as if I reside in a large country pile with a cellar and attics. But as the floor clears, and I can open cupboards without things falling out, and can wear things from my wardrobe without having to re-iron them; I start to see the benefits of comparative minimalism.

 Husband's mood has lightened with every refuse and recycling sack which has left our abode. "I feel so much better," he says. "Everything looks so much better".

I am forced to agree with him, even as I salvage my old mobile phone and secretly stash it in my bedside drawer. (After all, one never knows - I might lose my current one...)