Thinking back to when we moved in, nearly a decade ago, we must have rattled around, occupying just one out of four bedrooms. Our collective junk spread itself lazily around elsewhere. Then, as successive children were shelled like peas (fresh as the moment when the pod went pop), we chased the junk into the smallest bedroom until that too was required for a small person. Whereupon it made its way up the stepladder into the loft, a journey of no return.

Everything, everything, everything, everything...
In its right place
— Radiohead, Everything In Its Right Place

Often strikes me that a disproportionate (a typing exercise in one word) time at weekends is spent sorting. There's good sorting - shuffling books around to group by author, so Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is next to The Diamond Age adjacent to Zodiac which neighbours Snow Crash, which I indulged in a spot of on Sat morning - and bad sorting - being faced with a pile of stuff and having to justify keeping each item. Take the surname of the chap who narrated Paddington Bear, insert an "a" between letters two and three, and drop the last letter.

That Bowie bloke mentioned his mate Moby in an interview recently, who he admires for living a spartan and largely possession-free existence. I've got a sneaking suspicion that he of the ubiquitous advert tunes has numerous secret lock-ups full of LPs, college notes and discarded electrical equipment.

Course, if I had the time I'd do my own life laundry, starting with all the blue plastic Ikea boxes under the bed. Next up would be the countless A4 folders full of who-knows-what, followed by the umpteen magazine files. There's some tough decisions ahead.

If You Take Away With You Nothing Else

Feng shui for beginners:

1. go buy a three-legged frog from a Chinese supermarket and display it by the front door
2. keep nine goldfish; if a fish dies, that misfortune was meant for you
3. oh, and tidy your rubbish

Be seeing you!

Ed