VERITY LUSH: Task of getting rid of The Stuff has been so daunting

Rare is the person who doesn’t have a lifetime of clutter behind them.

We stuff our bedrooms at our parents’ homes when we are young, then we move out and begin to stuff our own homes, or flatshares, or halls of residence.

Whenever we move, we clear some of The Stuff out, but not always enough.

We’ve recently been undergoing a mass redecoration and, aside from the general stress that this induces in most mummies (piles and piles and piles of tat, the house over, whilst rooms are cleared), I have been gobsmacked by just how much Stuff there is.

The children have Stuff, for example. So much Stuff. Their Stuff is everywhere. And I have had the bittersweet task of clearing the Stuff. Fifty bin bags and counting.

I have also got rid of 20 bags of clothing. Twenty bags! This would surely suggest that we will therefore spend the summer wandering aimlessly in only our underwear, for who could possibly have enough clothes to enable them to still have full wardrobes after TWENTY BIN BAGS OF CLOTHING have departed the home?

That’s right, us. It almost seems obscene once you realise, and I mean really realise because you are directly faced with it, just how much Stuff you have.

I have to say the task has been unbearably daunting. One of those where you do not know where on earth to start. And some of the Stuff has been with me for years.

Those items that you’ve had forever and have a sentimental attachment to, but then, one day, when you’re feeling harsh, you bin them.

Enough is enough. Enough with The Stuff!

It’s been a cathartic process, but quite back-breaking. Even the number of kids’ books we’ve given away has been quite incredible. Many had to go when the girls were at school of course, or else they’d have stopped us in our tracks and insisted that they ‘always read that one’. Because, after all, childhood is where the gathering of Stuff begins.

GET ONLINE TO FIX PROBLEM? I WOULD IF I HAD ANY INTERNET...

Virgin Media sent us a new hub (means nothing to me) and a vague leaflet telling us how to install it ourselves.

This method presumably saves person-power and cash for old Dickie Branson.

What it does not do is save stress for Mrs Lush.

The leaflet did not even make it clear as to which piece of equipment was being removed, but Mr Lush spent a happy hour with the gadgets and came out smiling.

The next morning – today – there is no internet.

Of course there’s not. It would never be that simple, would it?

So how I’ll be e-mailing this column in to my editor is anyone’s guess.

The leaflet tells me to get online to fix the problem.

I sense a fundamental flaw with this advice, Dickie.

I CHUCKED OUT OUR SLOTH, WHILE MY FRIEND GOT ONE FOR 20P

During The Great Lush Clearout, I happened to come across a Jelly Cat Sloth toy.

Little did I know that these had become quite collectable and I stuffed it in yet another bag for the charity shop at the end of our road.

The sloth was an adorable little thing, but unnecessary in the new and improved Lush household that has been cleared of clutter.

The following evening on Facebook (when I still had an internet connection, Mr Branson), what should I see a photo of but a familiar-looking sloth?

A friend of mine had posted a picture of said Jelly Cat Sloth that she had picked up for the bargain price of 20p that day, after longing for a sloth for some considerable time.

Gotta love a coincidence.