So as well as unfollowing a load of spare folk on Twitter, I’ve also been doing my bit for the environment by chucking out bagfuls of crap that I’ve been hoarding about the place for a while. ‘Mmm, so cathartic!’ I promise myself, as yet another black sack bounces down the stairs, on its way to the landfill site formerly known as outside-my-front-door. Black sacks of crap. How do I have SO MUCH crap? Where does it come from? I don’t remember acquiring it. That’s bad, right? Right. Hence my ongoing domestic streamlining. What I’m handily naming (rhyme alert) my innate ‘urge to purge’.

There are numerous places one can store crap, even in the smallest of abodes. Under my bed. On top of chests of drawers. In cupboards. Under the stairs. In the downstairs loo. Behind, around and on top of the actual downstairs loo. In the dungeon. In wicker storage boxes which once promised so much in terms of useful storage, but then just became, sadly and inevitably, receptacles for crap. There’s crap on top of crap. Crap within crap. Bags of crap in boxes of crap, hidden behind crap with more crap on top for extra camouflage. Crap I’d forgotten about, crap I hadn’t forgotten about but was studiously ignoring, crap I was fully aware of and hated, crap I like and can’t get rid of but know I should, crap I love and won’t part with until it is yanked from my cold, dead grip, and crap that is not crap but only masquerading as crap until I become enlightened to its actual use once more.

That’s a lot of FARKING CRAP.

This purge is continuous and lengthy. I see no end to it. I am responsible for 80% of the country’s rubbish at the moment. It is sitting in the bins outside my house. Well, actually, the bins aren’t outside my house, they’re up by the main road, and I can’t see them, which is excellent, cos then I can absolve myself of the terrible fact that I have filled all the bins, in the universe, ever. With my purged crap.

What I can, I donate to charity. The charity shops on Gloucester Rd are currently displaying many items from my past wardrobes within their windows. Just a bit spooky and weird-a-go-go, as I walk along and think, ‘Oh that’s a nice dress… and cardigan… and scarf… that I once wore. That exact outfit they have on the mannequin I wore to someone’s wedding two years ago. And looks better there. Damn.’

At least I haven’t bought anything back that I once owned. Yet.

But some things I can’t donate. The crap, mostly. So that goes in black sacks. Black sacks of doom.

I know why I’m doing this. Purging is good, yeah? In this way? New beginnings, letting go of the past, all that stuff. The ex and I will have to sort all the joint purchases soon. He’s moving away and making a new life for himself – no need to hang on to the past, is there. Some things are precious and won’t be purged, but other stuff? Stuff is only stuff. Crap. Things neither of us need, nor want. This current purge of mine is a kind of preparation, I think, for the next, significant, tandem purge. Good times.

In the meantime, anyone want some good quality crap? I have LOADS.

What do you hang on to, that you really should purge? Are you a hoarder, or do you find it easy to let go?