I've been a busy little Vegemite.

Have you ever felt like hiring a bobcat to clear out the contents of your house, so you can start all over again with just the bare essentials? In fact, some years ago there was a TV program called something like Your Life on the Lawn, where people dobbed in a dedicated hoarder; presenters turned up while hoarder was out and dumped the entire contents of the house on the front lawn - and then made the hoarder go through their Stuff to sort what they really needed and what was junk.

I have been diligently and consistently ridding ourselves of Stuff for several years now, but recently we decided, for sanity's sake, to separate our youngest two girls and give Miss Three her own room (Miss Three needs a solid 10 hours sleep or she's wretched but Miss Five is a night owl who happily gets by with about 6 hours a night!).

Which meant getting rid of our study/spare room.

Which meant redistributing the entire contents of the room throughout the rest of the house.

In other words - we suddenly had a storage crisis of major proportions. Which we all know, really means, we had a sudden Stuff crisis.

I've spent well over a week moving things around (both furniture and Stuff), and in the process trying to purge as best we can, cleaning the things we want to keep, and then trying desperately to find new homes for it all. I'm exhausted and we still have Stuff sitting everywhere; all over the dining table, on the floor in our bedroom, sitting on dressers and the top of the fridge... Sigh.

I reached breaking point about mid week last week where I was just too depressed to look at it any more - I mean, I'd been getting rid of so much Stuff, so why did we still seem to have so much?

The answer was of course, that for every bag of items I gave away to St. Vinnies, I brought something else into our home to "help" me live more simply!

I gave away a box of electrical appliances... and was given a vacola bottling unit. I gave away a dinner set... and bought a food dehydrator.

I stopped filling my pantry with processed foods... and used the space to store pickles and jams. I gave away unused casserole dishes... and used to space for storing bulk flour and grains.

I gave away unused linen... and used the storage space to stockpile groceries. I gave away bags of clothes... and had to find somewhere to store empty glass preserving jars.

We cleared out a section of the garage... and I bought a second hand home-brew beer kit with six dozen bottles. I gave away boxes and boxes of books... but had to find somewhere to store my new craft, knitting and sewing materials.

And so it goes on! I pondered briefly how it was that my grandparent's generation had much smaller houses but still had preserves etc, but the answer is obvious; they had no computers, TV's and kids toys and games, far fewer clothes and shoes, no electrical kitchen appliances save for perhaps a Mixmaster and toaster. Certainly no enormous filing cabinet, no wine rack, and definitely not two dining tables!

And as I've been moving things around, there's been a cascade of cleaning involved - dusty wine glasses, marks on the walls behind furniture, a new bedroom needing repainting and the carpet cleaning (which showed up the cobwebs on the cornices, the dirty skirting boards and the dusty blinds).

I'm so tired, but it's been a marvellous exercise from the point of view of showing in exquisite detail, just how much our lives are ruled by the Stuff we own; not only the storage of it but the cleaning and maintenance of it as well. I now truly understand why some people just hire a skip bin and fill it to the brim when they move houses! Thank goodness for Freecycle, although we still have items listed several times which nobody wants.

Anyway, wish me luck while I try and deal with the remainders (I swear double adapters must breed when you aren't looking); hopefully I'll be back blogging regularly again soon LOL.