I’ve just done another trip to Cornwall and back to see the boys and also… transport more boxes of books. One hundred possessions seems such a distant goal, I’m still lugging heavy boxes around and wondering where on earth I can ever store them permanently.

***

I know I should but I still can’t let them go. And there’s nowhere to store them in my mother’s house either. That’s because my mother’s house is, naturally, completely stuffed with her possessions. Quite a few books, of course, but for my mother, the things she really can’t let go of are clothes.

***

Mind you, they’re all really lovely and very good quality. My mother has always had a real gift for finding good clothes, often from charity shops or in sales. This is a talent that completely skipped me and landed in my daughter instead. But every drawer, every cupboard in a five bedroomed house is full of my mother’s outfits, none of which fit me because I’m considerably larger and a lot less elegant.

***

And yet at the moment, my mother is wearing black corduroy trousers and simple polo neck jumpers pretty much every day. She looks a million dollars in them, but that’s it. For special occasions she has a very smart skirt and jacket she wears with a red cashmere jumper. Most of the lovely clothes stuffed into the wardrobes haven’t been worn for years, some not for decades.

***

I’ve just got rid of half the clothes in my wardrobe as well but I found that considerably easier than the books. For my mother, letting go of any clothes at all is impossible because she might need them one day.

***

And that’s the catch, isn’t it? That’s why even thinking of paring down to just (?!) one hundred possessions both excites and terrifies me. What if I get rid of something and need it one day?

***

The fact is that even if I did need it again I almost certainly wouldn’t be able to find it (a.k.a. the five hammers problem*). But it’s the idea: fear of my annoyance if I found I needed something and I’d given it away just a week before.

***

Fear of shortage, fear of not enough. Considering we are the richest society and live the cushiest lives of any humans ever, this is pretty sad, really.

***

*The Five Hammers Problem. I buy a hammer to do a job. I put it in a safe place. A few months later, I need a hammer but I can’t find the one I bought. So I buy another one, use it, put it in a safe place… And so on. Until I move house and find five hammers.