Liberty - Enemy of the Hoarder

My daughter Liberty is a first class declutterer. Nothing would give her more pleasure than entering into the home of a chronic hoarder and barking the order Get Rid of It! as she regards with disdain each and every one of your 'treasures'. She has been extremely brutal with my treasures and extremely useful.

I invited her round initially to help me sort out the massive collection of children's books that had belonged to her and her sisters and had been handed down and put away for my little ones. We are a book loving family but when there are too many to choose from, pages are yellowed, spines damaged and covers dated... it ceases to be a pleasure. With the efficiency of a school librarian (which she was, briefly) she worked her way through the mountain of books and sorted them into three piles: keep, charity shop, recycle. I did not question her judgement.

Once the charity shop had taken their share and the paper recycling skip was a little fuller, we were left with a manageable pile of lovely books that fitted neatly onto the bookshelf space available and seven year old Addy immediately dived in and began browsing the titles to find some bedtime reading material. Exactly the result I was looking for.

Actually, I did overrule one of Liberty's decisions. She was adamant that the complete Harry Potter collection was a keeper. She was of the generation that grew up with Hogwarts and hungrily devoured each new school year as it was published. Personally, I loved the first three books but found the later volumes a chore. I am happy for my little ones to watch the films when they are ready and will buy the books for kindle if they show any interest. Books 1-3 take up an acceptable amount of space on the shelf. The rest have now gone. Sorry Liberty.

The little ones 'help' sort out the bookshelves

Sorting the books for me served only to whet Liberty's appetite. My husband clung possessively to his Peter Tosh CD as she scorned his musical taste and emptied our CD racks! She had me close to tears as she made me choose just one bat biscuit cutter out of the five I had collected.

Actually, my biscuit cutter collection was an embarrassment. I had carefully organised them into three large tins, eight plastic takeaway food containers, a plastic basket and a few loose ones. They took up  almost an entire cupboard. Nobody needs that many biscuit cutters. As Liberty sorted through them with the speed of an express train, I found myself saying - that one can go, I can never get the cookie dough out of it in one piece or that one can go, the head always falls off when I take it off the baking tray or what is that one supposed to be anyway? An owl? A rocket? Seriously, why had I held onto so many 'not fit for purpose' cutters anyway! We reduced my Xmas cutters to the ones I use every year and the Hallowe'en collection to the best of the different types, discarding all the cats because the tails never work.

Shortly after the decimation of my biscuit cutter hoard, daughter Taylor and her boyfriend came home from Uni and cooked a three course meal here at my house for my husband, myself and the boyfriend's parents. They planned a Mexican themed dinner with the star of the show being a dessert they had created to look like nachos but with biscuit tortilla chips, chocolate sauce salsa and grated white chocolate cheese. When Taylor asked me if I had a triangle biscuit cutter I immediately said Yes. Then I remembered Liberty's work. Maybe. It didn't take long to look through my new improved streamlined cutter collection to find that  the answer was No - my triangle cutter had not been elite enough to survive the cull. I was ready to cry and question the sanity of ever throwing away anything that you had considered good enough to buy in the first place when Taylor picked up a square cutter that  Liberty had spared and brightly suggested she could use that and cut it on the diagonal. That works! Crisis averted and the nacho inspired dessert was magnificent.

Shopping, books and brain shaped jelly

I've been thoroughly enjoying the unexpectedly warm, sunny days but the fallen leaves and the nip in the air this morning reminded me that we are now very definitely into October.

I went shopping with my daughter Ivy yesterday. I do enjoy buying new things but there is a very insistent voice in my head that holds tightly to the purse strings and convinces me that I don't really need the majority of the items that catch my eye. Luckily for my retail therapy (less luckily for my bank balance) Ivy's voice is louder and with her encouragement I came home with far more bags than I expected! I went a little bit mad in the underwear department and now own as many pretty, cleavage enhancing bras as I do shapeless sports ones designed to hold everything as flat and motionless as possible. My girlie side has been indulged.

With it being October, the influence of Hallowe'en is evident in the shops (alongside the expanding Christmas ranges). In Primark, I continued an annual tradition of buying Hallowe'en socks and found a must-have glow in the dark T shirt depicting the iconic Mickey Mouse silhouette constructed from three spider's webs. The Hallowe'en range in Asda was fun too. I loaded my basket with skull tableware, candles and the best thing EVER - a brain jelly mould. If my girlie nature was indulged by lingerie, my gothic side was leaping for joy with these few acquisitions.

The start of a new month also brought to mind my resolution to make 12 small changes for the better throughout the year. It has been far more effective than the traditional New Year's Resolution  approach that rarely lasts beyond January. Here we are rapidly approaching Christmas and I am still going strong.

My September change was simply to Read More Books which tied in beautifully with my mum discovering a new charity shop with extensive stocks of paperbacks and hardbacks for sale at 4 for £1. She freely admits that it has become something of an obsession to pop in, choose four books and add them to the pile that grows far quicker than she can ever hope to read them. Dad is a little despairing by the disparity between bookshelf space and books but mum keeps him sweet by going to the charity shop and searching out the books about trains or World War II for him. He can't complain then, can he she says, knowingly!

Every time my mum finishes a book, she passes it on to me, usually with the glowing review that it was  the best story she's ever read. She was taking a long time to read a particularly thick novel by Jilly Cooper. Rather than keep me waiting, she went to the charity shop and bought an identical copy for me (along with three more titles to qualify for the 4 for a £1 deal). You can almost hear my dad sighing with resigned defeat. As well as the books she has finished reading, she also brings me books I might like. I really am spoilt for choice and enjoying stories that I would never have picked for myself.

Once I finish a book, I give it back to mum to return to the charity shop... and while she's there it would be wrong not to look through and see if there are four more she could buy for a pound  (cue dad's exasperated eye rolling).

I love my never ending supply of 'lucky dip' reading material courtesy of mum's obsession but I do have to balance it against my own backlog of books that I want to make time for. It is not unusual any more for me to be part way through three books at any one time (four or five if you include non fiction). Right now I am reading: Overheard in a Dream by Torey Hayden (one mum thought I would like), the brilliant Game of Thrones series by George RR Martin (my choice on the Kindle) and The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh (recommended by my daughter Taylor).

I can think of nothing nicer as the October evenings close in than to snuggle up (halloween socks keeping my feet warm) with a good book (and possibly a brain shaped jelly!)