Clutter

This is my kitchen. It's only a small kitchen, maybe a third or even a quarter of the size of the one in the old cottage, and it's barely wide enough for two people to pass. Its cupboards are full to the point that I'm not entirely sure what's at the back of them and now the surfaces are getting a bit over-populated, too. 

The cupboard tops on the right aren't so bad, except that I ought to find a proper home for the kids' breakfast cereal, I guess. The one on the left is a disaster, though. The working space for cooking is marginally larger than the size of a piece of A4. Amongst many other things, there are jars of pickled onions that my dad made, each containing two or three onions bobbing gently in their vinegar; bowls and mugs, the latter inverted for some reason; and empty (washed) milk bottles waiting to be returned to the Minx's milkman.

My brother, Wol, is an active de-clutterer. He's the sort of chap who can travel to California for a couple of weeks, travelling only with hand luggage, whereas I never travel anywhere without at least two bags (satchel and man-bag). Often I'll have a sports bag and overnight bag, too.

The whole decluttering thing does appeal to some part of me but, since I lack any kind of mental proportional representation, its voice is seldom heard and rarely acted upon. Indeed, for the last couple of years it's been my possessions that define home for me: stacks of books, shelves of CDs and DVDs, piles of clothes and kitchen cupboards full of... well, at the moment I'm not so sure. I think it's time for a spring clean.