Cloudy Wine Glasses, Hot Wheels Cars & Inherited Christmas Decorations

I've got a cupboard full of glasses in the dining room that is becoming increasingly irritating.

There are so many crammed into it that getting to the ones you want involves moving several others out of the way. It's like one of those sliding puzzles. The ridiculous thing is that we've got some lovely dishwasher-safe crystal glasses, which we bought a few years ago.

They're still in their boxes.

A friend keeps her wine glasses in boxes to protect them, and I thought that seemed sensible. Except having to get a box out, open it and take a glass out is apparently enough of an inconvenience for me to keep using the old ones. Which have gone cloudy in the dishwasher because they're not dishwasher-safe. The new ones are.

Make that make sense.

Anyway, I've been feeling the urge to declutter recently. I get like this every now and again. I can live quite happily with things getting untidy when I'm busy, then suddenly I've had enough and want everything sorted. (Maybe DeclutterCon last week has set me off.)

I like things tidy, although I'm not convinced I'm naturally a tidy person. When I'm creating something, my workspace can look as though a small tornado has passed through. And years ago, I was much more houseproud than I am these days. I could never relax at weekends until I'd done all the housework, and put real pressure on myself, which I think came partly from growing up with my mum's standards.

I've relaxed considerably these days, although I do still love it when everything is just so.

One way I've approached decluttering previously is to imagine we're moving house.Would I want to pack this? Would I pay somebody to move it? Would I bother unpacking it? I remember getting my friend Richard to help me clear out many years ago. At one point he was in the kitchen, holding up a wooden spoon. "How many wooden spoons do you actually need? You've got five!" Apparently, according to Richard, one was sufficient. I felt slightly affronted. There was nothing wrong with them, and you never know when you might need another one.

That exchange has stayed with me.

I've spent much of my adult life in the past without much spare money, which I suspect has influenced how I feel about getting rid of useful things. When you've worried about affording an unexpected £40 car repair, (true story) throwing away something that might come in handy doesn't feel sensible. I'm also increasingly conscious of waste and hate the thought of usable things ending up in landfill.

On Friday, I finished a bottle of Mermaid gin. It's a beautiful turquoise bottle, shaped like a mermaid's tail. I've already got one that I use for olive oil, with a pourer fitted, and it looks lovely on the kitchen worktop. I didn't need another, but couldn't bear to throw it away. So I put it on our local Recycle and Free group, and somebody collected it. I was really pleased, I liked knowing somebody else could enjoy it.

I have a similar relationship with leftover yarn.

My mum died nine years ago, and I'm still using yarn from the enormous stash she left behind. Earlier this year I went through a phase of crocheting free-form ponchos from oddments that weren't enough to make anything substantial individually.

I loved turning those bits into something completely different. The snag is that I've now got about eight ponchos in a bag that I don't need. I could put them on Vinted for £20 each and I'd be delighted if they sold. Although if they all went within a week, I'd immediately wonder whether I should have charged £30.

There's clearly no pleasing me.

I've realised I don't struggle to let things go once I've decided I no longer want them. I just like knowing they're going somewhere useful. And sometimes things are worth keeping simply because they give us pleasure.

Paul has collected thousands of Hot Wheels cars over the years, mostly still in their original packaging. For ages they lived in bags for life in the loft. When I asked him why, he said they might be worth something, so I suggested he find out.

Most weren't particularly valuable, and it felt quite sad that he'd spent years collecting them without actually enjoying them. So he bought display shelves for the landing, and I spent hours arranging the cars in rainbow colour order. Now he enjoys his collection, and I enjoy a lovely colourful display. Which seems like a win to me.

Perhaps that's what's been bothering me about our cupboards.

We've gradually created a home that reflects who we are. When Paul and I moved in together, we had furniture from our previous lives, including plenty of second-hand things we made do with. Over the years we've replaced things with stuff we've deliberately chosen and both really like.

We don't necessarily have lavish tastes but it’s nice to have the choice. Our £24 air fryer is a case in point. We bought a cheap one because we weren't convinced we'd use it, despite everyone raving about them – especially Finn when he came home from uni. Anyway, we use it daily, and all the numbers have worn off the controls LOL. We're considering upgrading because we now know which additional features we'd use.

It’s nice being able to make those decisions.

However, we've still got cupboards full of things from earlier chapters and that’s the stuff I want to tackle.

There's a cute little coffee set my nana gave me when I was young. I don't love it and I'll never use it. There are boxes and boxes of pens and pencils in my office and books I haven't opened for years. And those lovely crystal wine glasses are inaccessible because they're protected in their boxes…

I've also been thinking about something more uncomfortable. Over the past decade, we've cleared out my mum and dad's house and Paul's dad's house, collectively 100 years’ worth of ‘stuff’. If you've ever done this, you'll know there's far more involved than deciding what goes in a charity bag.

For example, my mum loved Christmas and spent an absolute fortune on decorations. I kept them in our loft for years, although they weren't necessarily things I wanted. It took ages for me to feel ready to let them go. Having been through that, I'm conscious that one day somebody else will have to make decisions about whatever Paul and I leave behind.

I don't particularly want our kids sorting through cupboards full of things we could happily have got rid of ourselves. So apparently, I'm capable of worrying about being judged for my clutter when I'm no longer around to hear the verdict.

But thinking about it, I realised I want to feel free of the unnecessary stuff. I'd like to open a cupboard without half its contents falling on my head and use the lovely glasses instead of the cloudy ones that happen to be easier to reach.

It’s actually just that I want the things around me to reflect who I am and how I'm living now.

I've got shoes I absolutely love that I probably won't wear again, and I'm happy for them to stay for now. There are things that hold memories, make us smile or simply give us pleasure and I think that’s ok.

But there's also quite a lot that's still here just because it is. Some of the things I'm keeping are taking up space in a life they no longer belong to. And I'd quite like that space back I think it will be liberating.