Resolutions

I was reading Red's New Year's Day post on the subject of Resolutions. It  reminded me that I'd mentioned New Year resolutions somewhere in the last week or so. I just can't recall where.

Anyway, as usual, I didn't make any. I didn't take a decision not to make any. I just never got around to it. I never do.

Over this last week or so since Christmas I have been out very little. I took a conscious decision to stay in and get some of my 'old' life back: to blog and get back to letter-writing more again. 

I also want to go through the hundreds or thousands of possessions (many of which I probably haven't set eyes on for many years) which occupy every nook and cranny of my reasonably-sized three-bedroom bungalow and see what I can dispose of.  After all there is going to come a point when everything will go simply because of the reality that I shall not be on this mortal coil for ever. 

One of the things I started on was some of the art that I have in cupboards and the loft. I have quite a lot from originals to prints and photographs as well as pottery and other objets d'art. 

For example in storage I have some wonderful original oil portraits and landscapes and still lifes from the 1950s painted by a neighbour who was a retired fruit merchant who devoted the rest of his life to painting. One of them was hung in the RA for an exhibition.  I have some painted by my mother and by my brother CJ and drawings by my father. All those have sentimental value as well as being 'good'. Then I have prints of pictures I have simply because I enjoy them. 

On my walls I have many more works of art which I enjoy every day. I've just counted and there are 38 about 27 of which are originals: the others being prints or copies.

The problem is not so much what to get rid of as how to dispose of those one no longer wants.

One Hundred Things? You're Kidding.

I think I was in hospital when I came across an article in a paper (in hospital and on ferry journeys are just about the only times I tend to read newspapers these days) which said that decluttering guru Mary Lambert says we only need 100 items and once we cull we will be happier, calmer and more successful. The journalist writing the article said that she had spent a strange weekend counting her possessions and had over 100,000 in her one-bedroom flat. Apparently the 'average' US home has over 300,000 possessions. 

There are, of course, 'rules' to this. Clothes count as possessions (well that my 100 used up easily) but all similar essential clothes like socks, handkerchiefs, underwear etc just count as one item for each type. Crockery doesn’t count, nor does food and drink (so my collection of wines and spirits is allowed, phew) or cleaning materials, tools or bed linen. 

Lambert cheerily quips that the lighter life is addictive and you might find yourself wanting to downsize in these areas too. Lambert acknowledges that whittling everything down to 100 items is no mean feat and suggests tackling it over a period of seven months. Seven months! Seven years perhaps. After all it's taken me 7 decades to acquire this much.

I have no intention of counting my possessions but having done a quick tally of things viewable just in my living room I can say that having 1200 CDs and coming up to 1000 books doesn't augur well for my total being under 100,000 in the whole house. I have several hundred thousand photographs. Do they count?

I'm sure that decluttering is a worthy objective and I suspect most of us have been or are aiming somewhere along those lines. 

In reality I wonder how many things we can live with. At my age one could try moving into one-bedroom sheltered accommodation to find out. 

Without that sort of incentive, though the real question is how many things we are willing to get rid of.