Sunny blue skies

A friend of mine moved house this week from a lovely three bedroom townhouse to an equally lovely, though half the size, two bedroom apartment. In addition to the understandable stress of moving home there has been the challenge of downsizing: choosing what to keep and what to wave goodbye to from all her furniture and glassware, china, kitchen kit, clothing, books, garden tubs and all the rest. It has been such a wrench for her though we both know that in time, she will enjoy the lighter load at her new place.

Like many of us in lockdown, I’ve been taking the opportunity to clear out much of my ‘stuff’.  I enjoyed the sorting and that my house now feels more spacious but unlike my friend, I wasn’t under pressure to jettison anything I didn’t want to and certainly not by fifty percent.  But helping my friend this past few weeks has made me re-examine this relationship to stuff. Even though I have cleared out such as books, china, shoes and clothing, I’m still loathe to let some things take the decent path to the charity shop – what is it that makes things so ‘sticky’? I’ve read much about happiness and contentment and how best to achieve ‘everyday joy’ and it sure isn’t being surrounded by stuff. The latest survey I read about at the weekend claims that the top thing to make us British happy is ‘a sunny blue sky’. So I’ve decided that I need to re-charge my charity batteries and sift through all my stuff again to turf out more and then spend as much time as possible in the great outdoors, no matter what the sky’s like!