Decluttering

Living in Malaysia has taught us one major lesson - most of the junk you accumulate through life has no utility whatsoever and is not missed when you can't get at it.  We arrived in Sarawak with a suitcase each plus three air-freighted cardboard boxes and not once in two years did I think "oh, if only I'd packed that handy plastic ice cream tub crammed with old keys, badges, coins and fluff".

As well as being glad to be back home in Puglia I also felt I'd returned to a mountain of dusty and useless junk.  Disposal has however been another matter.  Books have been the toughest challenge, nobody wants grimy and mildewed English language tomes in the South of Italy.  They're probably not wildly popular in Sutton come to think of it.

Sue was all for sticking the lot on a big bonfire, but for me the connotations were just too strong and after a lot of aversion therapy I finally managed to train myself to throw them in the paper recycling container next to Locorotondo stadium.  After about the fifth box I began to feel strangely lighter.

As I write this I've just realised why this process of throwing shit away is so traumatic - it's an admission that our life is too short to ever need the stuff again.  Although, as I looked through the letter box shaped hole in the recycling bin at my tea-stained copy of "Finegan's Wake" I did console myself with the thought that I could always download it to my kindle - yeh right.