Decluttering

and extreme prevarication

There used to be a small sofa in our bedroom by the window - not a useful, squashy sofa, more like a small chaise-longue adjacent two-seater. It looked fine online (dark pink velvet, vaguely shell-shaped) and I had visions - lounging with a novel, spying on the neighbours, using it as a prop for at-home Ann Reinking sequences¹ (specifically this one, from Annie - double click, I think, to make it play:)

That dressing room!

Anyway: as is the way with things bought online for prices too good to be true, the sofa which arrived was MUCH flimsier than anticipated, with not-quite-right velvet and no castors for dance sequences. Ttchah!

So it has suffered the fate of most bedroom chairs, to be covered in: 1) clean clothes, to be put away 2) worn clothes, too clean to wash 3) framed pictures, yet to be hung 4) unframed pictures, yet to be framed 5) an assortment of his & hers pyjamas and 6) the cat - sleeping on my pyjamas. Next to all this, six vacuum packed bags of all the clothes the children have outgrown, in need of sorting/donating/giving away. Which have been sitting in our bedroom for (ahem) six months.

Grace Farrell’s bedroom from Annie it is not.

From the sofa of shame, to the corner of shame, to a full 1/3 of the room - OF SHAME. (You could, no joke, make a hoarding documentary about it.) The above is about 50% better than it usually looks: in an accurate drawing, you wouldn’t see any sofa, and you’d think I’d just drawn a scribbly hat, hiding an elephant, etc.

But this was the week. Thanks to the photo shoot for ‘Thirty’ getting pushed back, I had three uninterrupted days of childcare booked in². I was determined - the room would look like a bedroom again! Not like an abandoned sorting office/apocalyptic charity shop!

And so, the week went something like this:

Day 1:

Manage 30 minutes sofa-sorting - my clothes (right-hand side) my husband’s clothes (left-hand side.) Look at the bags of children’s clothes, and decide to go to Reformer Pilates - my first class in three months. Run to the class, hobble back. Clothes remain unsorted.

Day 2:

Must use childcare time productively. Sadly, post Pilates, I cannot move. Shuffle downstairs, tackle seated admin, consider vac-packed mountain. I could start on it or - oh no! Rain! Must rescue the roses, and peonies! While out, notice sluggagedon. Return to the garden with an empty yoghurt pot, and a can of Fosters. Dispatch a container’s worth, with an accompaniment of colourful language: ‘WHY WON’T YOU DIE, YOU SLIMY BASTARD!’. Again, preferable to clothes sorting.

Rescue rangers, garden edition.

Day 3:

It is THE day. I empty and sort every vacuum packed bag of the children’s clothes into piles on the bed: 0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months, 9-12 months, 12-18 months. It is more gut-wrenching than words. Not acutely painful, more like an ache, in my middle. It intensifies when the bags turn out tiny newborn vests, no bigger than my hand. Some babygrows, from repeated washing, are the softest clothes I’ve ever handled: I think how much another mother would like them; they’re exactly what I would put on a new baby. I cannot have another baby. Hence the extreme prevarication of the past six months and three days. I want to need these clothes; I do not.

A friend had a new baby, and I’d promised to send her the very best of the girls’ things: a flowered quilted jacket, aged 0-3, worn by both children but as good as new. A coral terry-towel playsuit, for a six-month old, a soft-lined white cotton sailor dress with a big navy bow and collar. Six or so of their very best pieces, wrapped in fresh tissue paper, packed into a gift box. ‘All ready!’, I texted blithely, ‘taking them to the post office!’

Did I take them to the post office? The box sat in the corner of my study for one week, then another. ‘I must send this’, I thought, ‘before the baby grows out of them.’ The box sat another month, then two, then six. Her daughter is now 18 months old. The box is still in my study. Very, very sheepishly, I wrote to congratulate her on a second new boy, apologising for the unposed box, and what appeared to be a psychological hold on the children’s clothes. (She was very gracious about it.)

Last week I opened up the gift box, confronting that I wasn’t giving these particular clothes away. I added in the hand-sized baby vests, and the cardigans hand-knitted by friends. And at 11pm on Day 3, because we couldn’t go to sleep with the bed covered in age-sorted piles (below) I admitted to my husband that I couldn’t pack them up alone. His face mirrored mine when I held up the hand-sized vest, and then he helped me wrap each stack in new tissue paper (shell pink) and new thick, matt gift bags (palest pistachio.) I labelled each with a tag as appropriate (‘BABY GIRL: 3-6 MONTHS.’) And now, as soon as I put an ad up on our local food-and-clothes sharing app, they’ll be gone.

To keep/to give? I adored the green one with pink leopards.

There are now three, pale-pink tissue and navy ribbon wrapped parcels of the best 18 month old clothes, sitting on the sideboard, ready to send to my friend’s daughter.

Just as soon as I get to the post office.

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Thank you so much for reading this week’s post! If you enjoyed it, please do leave a heart below for the algorithm (and moi!), and I would love to hear your experiences & advice on de-cluttering clothes (successful or otherwise!)

AND, a big thank you to everyone who voted in last week’s poll - it was incredibly helpful for working out the level to pitch the cookery course, and I’m happy to say that reader Hannah Bond is the winner on the cookbook draw! (Hannah, I’m dropping you an email and this is a great way to get me to the post office with your book, a Roasting Tin book which I owe Clare Rigby AND with the parcel/s of clothes above to post.) Course plans are mulling based on your feedback, and look forward to sharing the details with you all very soon!

Wishing you a brilliant week ahead, Mini xx

Me: ‘Why IS the cat sleeping there?’ Mia: ‘You like her sleeping there, Mummy.’ Mia is two years old.

1. Sadly your correspondent has absolutely zero coordination: Zumba choreography is beyond me. So there will be no third act as a Fosse-esque hoofer, ALAS.

2. “Will you cancel the childcare, now the shoot’s moved?’ HAHAHAHA are you joking. No.