De-Cluttering

When we arrived back in the UK 18 months ago and moved into our new house, we realised we had accumulated a lot of stuff.

We had shipped home the contents of a spacious three bedroom apartment, plus we’d kept a UK flat containing the ‘basics’. The new house became home to two sets of everything.  One year on and daughter no 1 graduated and returned home, albeit briefly, with several boxes of possessions acquired as a student, and then the husband finished his stint in Saudi and another overseas consignment arrived, containing yet more stuff.

I’ve realised I’m not so much living in a house as a three storey storage unit with a kitchen and a bathroom.

A few years back I was a great fan of that programme ‘Life Laundry’.  I’ve always been quite good at de-cluttering, trying not become too sentimental about inanimate objects, and encouraging the others around me to 'let go'.

With my other half now home and relatively quiet on the work front, we decided it would be a good time to finally put our stamp on the new house and decorate. What better opportunity, as each room is emptied for painting, than to de-clutter.

I don’t need four cut-glass fruit bowls. I rarely entertain.  Nostalgia has its place, but the chipped Grecian urn bought many moons ago on a package holiday to Rhodes has probably had its day. As with clothes, the fashion, and passion, for kitchenware and ornaments change. It’s time to be out the old, and not necessarily, in with the new.

I have every intention of downsizing in the not too distant future, so it’s off to the charity shop with several bags of belongings.  Old furnishings, Jigsaw puzzles, boardgames – why am I keeping them? Trivial Pursuit anyone? No, I didn’t think so.

Perhaps it’s the arrival of the spring sunshine but I’ve also felt the need to rejuvenate colour schemes, plump up cushions and re-arrange a few pictures around the house.

‘You wouldn’t know I lived here,’ the teenager complained when she noticed her photograph had been removed from the mantelpiece.  (One look upstairs and there is no doubt we still have a teenager living in the house).  Despite the fact that there is very fetching picture of her on a nearby windowsill, and another on the bookcase, a photo on the mantelpiece is apparently the ultimate accolade.

As for the bookcase, do we actually need books any more now that we’ve all evolved onto the Kindle? Should I de-clutter my bookcase, throw out all those much loved favourites now that I have the ability to download everything?  Now that’s a tricky one. Maybe there are some things that are still sacrosanct after all.

Gone Girl

We all have to learn to take criticism.  I’m a Virgo which means I take it quite badly. However, in the writing game you have to learn to take your knocks – and your rejections – and pick yourself up again.  We all know the story of JK Rowling and how many publishers are now kicking themselves because they turned down her first story about Harry Potter…

So, when my tutor gives me advice, I generally take it.  We are constantly told to ‘show’ not tell, leave the reader guessing, allow them to use their imagination to fill in the gaps. This directly contravenes with ‘too many questions unanswered’ – another one of my tutor's favourites, presumably when I have taken the first piece of advice too far.

People think writing is easy, and it isn’t. It’s a skill, it’s a craft.  You have to hook your reader, keep them guessing, then give them a satisfactory finish. Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was (apparently) the book of last summer.  It’s not an easy read, but I persevered only to be rewarded with the crappiest ending ever. Having stuck with the two obnoxious antagonists over many chapters I felt I deserved something better - one of them at least should have got their come-uppance (and it's not very often I'm on the side of an adulterous husband....).  I felt the author had copped out and I felt cheated.

Last term my tutor told me I’d ‘cheated’ the reader out of a proper ending on a 900 word short story because it didn’t have a definite ‘conclusion’, I re-wrote it.  I understand that Gillian Flynn has now done the same for the film version of her book. Shame no-one suggested it earlier.  I'm usually the first one up in arms when a story is changed beyond recognition to satisfy Hollywood. As far as I can see in Gone Girl's case it can only be a good thing!