Clutter

The flat-buying is moving along steadily – survey satisfactory (so said a text message from the lender – we’ve not actually laid eyes on the report ourselves yet) and the mortgage has been approved. I suppose the main thing that can go wrong now is for the seller to decide they don’t want to move to the country afterall, that her hernia would be best off in London (quite why the Estate Agent felt the need to tell me about her hernia, I don’t know, it is the only thing about them he has ever said).

But fingers-crossed it seems to be going fairly smoothly and I’m beginning to allow myself to think about furniture and household goods. My main concern is that we own too much ‘stuff’. Any home décor magazines or programmes seem to be aimed at people without much in the way of belongings. Nobody else seems to have 1000+ records, a million CDs (do we really need three copies of Screamadelica?) and several forests worth of books. Do other people not read or do they just use the library or throw out their books when they’ve read them? The people we are buying from did actually have a lot of stuff too but I would rather have a little less clutter.

I’m thinking I might get rid of some of the books – I hardly ever re-read books anyway, so I’m not sure why I hang on them – a hangover from doing a degree in literature I suppose and I always like having a nose at books in other people’s houses when they have them. But then the OH refuses to get rid of any of his old stuff (he could start with the Young Gods CD which I’m certain he has never listened to, then perhaps some of the copied tapes of Carter USM which are gathering dust and probably won’t play anymore).

And because he won’t throw anything out, I start to think ‘Why should I?’. Maybe I should just have clearout when he’s away and hope he doesn't notice.