But where do you start? The advice usually says anywhere will do as long as you start. But starting in itself is perhaps the hardest part and deciding where equally challenging when you’re stuff is surrounding you. There have been times where I’ve sat down next to a pile of stuff I’m supposed to be sorting, looked through it, got up and walked away. I do know that our journey to de-clutter has been anything but simple. 10 steps? Maybe 132 steps and counting….

We know that we’d be happier, healthier, less stressed and able to think more clearly if the stuff was sorted but in honesty, the road to achieving this isn’t always as easy as it’s made out to be. Perhaps if you’re 20, sorting your possessions isn’t so hard. At 20 I moved house every 9 months so my belongings had to fit into a small car. 20 years later, with fewer moves and two small children, our belongings have had an opportunity to build up. I recently sorted through our books and managed to send 90 of them to a second hand, online store. It took days (on and off) and a substantial amount of stamina not to give up. Watching the boxes leave the house was a very satisfying moment.

De-cluttering takes time, something we don’t have so much of these days. And given the choice between heading out to the park with my girls, or getting that box of books listed or dropped off at the charity shop, I know which I’d choose. But to achieve our goals in life the stuff has got to go. And so we slowly work through it, bit by bit.

In essence I’m just trying to say that getting back to basics, getting to a place where possessions aren’t in charge, takes time and commitment and it can be hard. We’ve got rid of a lot, but even with some de-cluttering experience under our belts, getting to the end of our journey is proving a challenge. So don’t feel bad if you don’t seem to be making progress. And don’t give up. It is something you can achieve one step at a time, maybe just a few more than 10…

Some people I know have friends like on “Friends”. A tight knit group who live in each other’s pockets, calling in at each other’s homes unannounced and helping themselves from the fridge. My small circle of friends is most definitely not like that. I have a few friends here and a few there. One group from way back who all know each other but are scattered across the country, others who all live nearby but don’t share a history. My very best friend is on the other side of the world. There have been moments in these groups where things have become complicated. Two friends falling out. Me stuck in the middle. One friend deciding not to be part of the group any more but wanting contact with just one or two. Messy.

Though moving on from friendships which aren’t working can be good, moving on from ones you’d rather keep can be difficult. I had one friend at college who was a particular favourite. She was funny, intelligent, shared my interests and we always had loads of fun. After college we kept in touch and when she moved close to me in London we were both excited. But slowly the effort was all on my part. I don’t think I did anything specifically wrong, she had just moved on. And once I accepted this I did too.

We’re facing leaving our friends this year to go traveling. It’s taken a good few years to find friends here we share more with than just being parents. While I’m excited about the adventures that we’re heading off to have, I’m also a little sad to go. We may or may not end up back here. And if we move on we’ll have to start all over again. Of course there are a few we’ll always keep in touch with. And I guess they are the ones who in return will make an effort to keep in touch with us.

Perhaps this natural editing helps you to really figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Maybe you do choose your friends, but not in a black and white way, in a more subtle way. You get better at friendship itself and find it easier to let things take their own course. For us it feels, as we get older, that just a few, really good friends are enough. A bit like possessions. We don’t need much, but what we have is meaningful.

We were due to leave in September and return in early December so we assumed it would be a warm start and a cold finish (in fact it snowed the day we left!). There would be few opportunities to wash clothes apart from in hotel sinks and so I began to pack enough clothes for two seasons. The suitcase I took was, literally, big enough for me to climb in and when filled with all my belongings I couldn’t lift it off the floor. “No matter” my mother said, “it has wheels”. I protested and with a bit of editing I could just about move it around.

On arriving at the airport I realised that my fellow travellers were much more travel savvy than me. I was greeted with an array of lightweight backpacks and even one carry on bag! I was incredulous. Three months belongings in such a small bag. How? I felt ridiculous.

Needless to say the trip was amazing. My suitcase didn’t ruin my enjoyment but it did mar the experience. Every time we moved hotel I had to pack and pull this enormous weight. It was so hard on some occasions that by the time we reached the train or coach my hands were in agony. In one town we had to walk up a steep hill to our hotel and I almost didn’t make it.

These days I pack light. Seriously light. I can fit a family of four’s belongings for a week into one backpack. My trip to Italy taught me to be ruthless. Back then I used barely a quarter of what I took with me and these days I hardly ever take something that isn’t used or worn.

Unsurprisingly the suitcase fell apart by the time I got home. It was not replaced. Instead it was downsized and a lightweight, compact backpack took its place.

We’re preparing to downsize our home so we can spend time on the road and the reality of what we actually need reminds me of that suitcase. The process of preparing for a more compact living space is helping us to focus on what matters. That suitcase was hauled across a country, but even at home an excess of possessions can feel like the burden of dragging around unnecessary baggage. Editing down our possessions to the few items that we really care about is like lightening the load.

The interesting thing about the 5 things in that list is that they require a big dose of imagination. Toys these days just don’t really leave room for that. Particularly toys which are linked to children’s tv programmes. With those, the characters are fully formed and the stories are even already there for you. Take, for example, a Ra Ra the Noisy Lion toy I saw recently. It was a train, with a small, plastic Ra Ra Lion and a small, plastic version of each of his friends. The characters each take it in turns to drive the train, and when you put them into their seat, the train recognises the character and makes its noise for you! Wow. No need to even make the noise yourself!

I’m not suggesting that in my day we only played with sticks and mud, but I do remember cardboard boxes having a big part in our lives. These days it’s hard to even find a cardboard box. We truly did spend time out in the fields, climbing trees, digging in the mud, paddling in the river. Toys were important but not the focus of our lives. We didn’t have a dedicated children’s TV channel or video games. We didn’t experience the level of merchandise associated with those programmes that our children see when they visit any toy shop.

It’s a fine balance. Allowing your children to experience the things in life other children are experiencing and enabling them to have a shared culture. But at the same time, protecting them from the onslaught of advertising, ensuring they have the time and space to use their imaginations. Create their ship from a cardboard box, explore the seven seas with their toilet roll holder telescope, climb the string rigging, live on mud pies and row ashore at bedtime with their stick oars.

Similarly, adverts for holidays now generally have the same theme – a plane somewhere, sunshine and a pool. They’re not called package holidays for nothing. A package is easy to understand and buy. After all, why worry about what kind of holiday we want? The thinking has been done for us. The holiday product exists and we know what it is.

Products are everywhere. We know the intricate details of the Relationship Product. At some point we can trade this in for the Marriage Product and, perhaps, the Family Product. If we try hard to imagine what these things look like we’ll realise that we don’t need to try hard at all. We’ve seen the images of these products before. We understand them.

The hardest thing to do in life is to reject the products. The efficiency of the product model makes products cheaper, more accessible, more acceptable. But they are just products. We don’t have to buy any of them. We can make everything a personally-designed experience, unique to us. What’s interesting is that thinking for ourselves is more about unlearning than anything else.

I confess that I do purchase beauty products. I have friends who make their own and who wouldn’t dream of putting anything on their faces that they wouldn’t eat. My purchases are pretty limited these days, though I did, in the past, spend an unreasonable amount on cleansing, toning and moisturising.

When I visit the chemist these days for my meagre supply of soap I’m always amazed at the range of stuff on offer and how confusing and frankly image shattering it all is. It’s no wonder we have such low self esteem and body confidence. There’s a solution for everything. Even problems you weren’t aware of. You could, in fact, be slathering your every inch in one lotion or another at every waking and sleeping moment.

There are products for hair, face, neck, lips, eyes, chest, tums, bums, legs, feet and hands. There’s essential nourishment, indulgent nourishment, silky nourishment, intensive nourishment. There’s a pro contouring system, a wrinkle filler, a tired eye brightening moisture serum, an instant visual flaw softening serum and polishing hot cloth cleaners. You can protect and perfect or lift and luminate or restore and renew. Choose from 38 hand creams, resurface your skin (ouch!) or if you can’t choose get an anti age starter kit (it’s a whole kit and it’s only for starters!). My favourite though is two creams which you use together to “create thousands of imperceptible electrical impulses which enhance skins own regeneration”.

In a recent blog post on Simple Savvy, Christine Terramane (@savvychristine) writes about her simple hair routine. The Great Hair Care Post explains how she uses soap and coconut oil. No need for mousse or gel or hairspray, straighteners, curlers, detanglers, hair masks or serums. Her bathroom cabinet must be clutter free, her beauty budget minimal and her days free of time consuming rituals.

I strive to be this simple. My own bathroom cabinet has no pro retinols, lumi-gen technology or soy isoflavins. I try not to worry about the effects of age and a child induced lack of sleep. I’d prefer to embrace a few wrinkles than cover my face in “Amazing Wrinkle Filler”. There are more important things to spend time on and, of course, money. A face that shows the adventures it’s had is already amazing. No need for that “one wash”.

Guilt works on a grand scale too. How many of our actions are determined by the avoidance of guilt? How much do we try to do the right thing in situations because we can’t face the guilt of doing the wrong thing? Perhaps in many ways morality is simply the pursuit of a guilt-free life.

In those circumstances, where the potential for guilt keeps us on the straight and narrow, there is actually some clear use for the emotion. But it’s not always the case, and it’s thinking about these negative aspects that made we want to write this post.

On a recent visit to some relatives we were talking about the possessions someone had in their loft. Specifically they had a large collection of slides, a projector and a screen. The slides were of a, now deceased, family member and largely consisted of their old holiday pictures. Because it’s so time consuming to set up a slideshow and actually look at pictures in this format my immediate thought was that they should scan them all to disk.

Their response was that they never actually wanted to look at the pictures. After all, why would they want to watch a slideshow of someone else’s holiday? It occurred to me that what they’d said was ridiculous and illuminating in equal measure. I mean, who really does want to spend their whole evening looking at pictures of someone else’s holiday, no matter how close you are to them?

But here’s the problem. This person and their slide collection were stuck in a kind of limbo. They didn’t want to put on a slideshow, or indeed scan them for future viewing. Equally they couldn’t bring themselves to throw the slides away. They just couldn’t face the inevitable guilt.

So we’re in a ridiculous situation. One which makes me question the whole notion of “sentimental value”. Are we keeping things, mementos, souvenirs because they really mean something to us? Or are we keeping them because we’d feel guilty throwing them away?

The things is, if the person who owned those possessions, or who gave them to us, or of whom they remind us were here now, do you think they’d insist on us keeping all that stuff? Or do you think they’d tell us to get rid of it, start afresh? I’m pretty sure I know the answer to that.

I wondered today, as I browsed, how all these shops make money. The amount of stuff that people in my town are getting rid of must be huge. And if they are getting rid of so much stuff, are they all deciding to live simply? Or are they just replacing all the stuff with more, new stuff. So the stuff goes around and around.

What has struck me more recently is the sheer quantity of junk and cheap clothing they have on offer. People aren’t giving treasure away. They are using the charity shops as a bin. A place to drop off the cheap stuff they bought and used once or twice. Clothing from supermarkets or cheap chain stores, mass produced household items, cheap materials and badly made. Bought new they cost next to nothing. Second hand they are almost giving it away.

I’m not sure what I find most disturbing. That there’s enough stuff being thrown out to keep 12 shops in business, or that most of what they are selling is close to rubbish in the first place. It’s such thoughtless living. No thought goes in to the purchasing and no thought goes in to what happens after the bag of unwanted stuff is dumped at the door of the charity shop and more new stuff replaces it.

I for one would spend money in a charity shop if I could find clothes worth buying. I wonder how long they will survive if their stock of cheap clothing keeps growing and the quality clothes disappear. It would be a shame to lose them. They provide a great recycling and community service, on top of the money they raise. Maybe we could all take something of quality we no longer use in to our favourite charity shop this week, instead of leaving it sitting at the back of the wardrobe.

I was clearing some paperwork and set a pile aside to light the fire with later in the day. As I picked each sheet up to add it to the fireplace, I couldn’t help having a quick scan, but the scan soon turned in to a long and fascinating read.

My bank statements transported me back to a very different time in my life. I was living in London with Simon, no children and a full time job. My salary, though not huge, was easily enough for the stage my life was at. My spending, on the other hand, was out of control.

Several items of new clothing a week, new shoes, eating in restaurants more than at home. Flights booked and holidays taken. Expensive shampoo, cinema tickets, gadgets, CD’s and stuff for our home. It’s the stuff we’ve spent the last few years getting rid of. And we’re still working on it.

Each page of the statements revealed a deepening of debt, a complete disregard for the financial situation I was in. I don’t think, back then, I ever checked my statements at all. I know that there came a point where I stopped opening the post. At one point about a third of my income was being spent on repaying credit cards and loans. And still I was shopping and eating out.

Looking back I don’t recognise the person reflected in those pages. The appearance of those statements at this point in life is a good reminder of how things have changed (we’re not in debt any more). I can’t go back and tell myself not to do it. But I can make sure it never happens again. The stark reminder is occasionally a useful thing. Scary but useful.

It can be hard sometimes to empathise with a four and a five year old. It can be hard to slow life down to their pace and make the time to really listen. When bigger things get in the way, like having to get somewhere by a certain time, or the fact that it’s cold outside and a fairy dress just won’t cut it, it’s easy to snap and get cross and before you know it the tears are flowing.

It’s times like this that Atticus Finch comes to mind and I try to remember what it was like to be four or five and something was really important to me. I try to get inside my children’s skin.

“If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” (Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird).

When I walk around in my children’s skin I can see how important it is that doggy is properly dressed before we go out, that today is actually a blue hat day and the label on those tights is really scratchy. I can see that the drawing just won’t be the same if it’s finished later, that the cracker needs a little bit of cheese and the message to daddy has to be sent now, not when we get there.

I give myself the luxury of time to finish stuff I think is important and I give myself the room to make my own choices and decisions. My children aren’t that different. They are just a bit smaller.

If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird I would add it to your list. And let me know if any books have had this kind of impact on your life.