The difficult decisions that come with downsizing

I’m perched on the bed reading an old Mothering Sunday card. It’s just one item in a box of miscellanea that I must sort and prune and I really can’t afford the time to linger. That box contains a fraction of what I have to deal with before I move house and I need to crack on. But I am sweating the small stuff.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. One of the legacies of lockdown has been a longing for more space. Across the UK, families with children are falling over themselves to find bigger places. It’s a downsizers’ market right now for those of us who feel ready to let go and to set about the sorting and binning of things. It’s good for us, they say. It’s liberating, they say.

My home-moving history is not an unusual one. From student digs and a tiny cottage for two, through houses big enough to accommodate four children and, eventually, visiting grandchildren; then gently downward, gradually shedding the consequences of having a husband who could leave no flea market unexplored.