“I’ve been thinking” I said to Catering (a phrase pretty much guaranteed to make his heart sink) that we are going to need to rationalise some stuff ahead of the house renovations. “What sort of stuff?” he replied cagily. You should know that Catering has a deep reluctance to throw things out (it’s inherited, his mother was just the same). The proposed house renovation programme has started me considering what is going to go where. There are things that will be staying and sadly some things that will have to move on.

The Balinese day bed is lovely, but it takes up a big chunk of space and no one ever sits on it, well apart from when the Smallest Boy’s mates crash out on it when they can’t be bothered to go in search of an empty bed. Apparently you can easily fit 2 weary young men on it, possibly 3, though they’d have to a) be quite slim and b) lie quite still. So it is off to pastures new.

Part of the renovation process involves turning what was the playroom but is now (and has been for a good number of years) Catering’s work space, from a shared space, into a proper grown-up office. The boys are no longer small (in fact they barely live here at all) and are way past needing a playroom. Gone are the days when Catering’s working day ended when they returned from school and the TV was switched on for the latest instalment of Man v Food or Storage Hunters.

His work space is going upmarket, and this will require much emptying & disposing, including the IKEA toy storage system, which currently holds lots of goodness only knows what. Please God let it not be yet more Lego that I’ve overlooked over the years. In addition there is a filing cabinet clear out to be done and I think it is this that is causing Catering to sweat. New, built-in, filing capacity is part of the proposed set-up and I am damned if he is just moving everything currently in the ancient cabinet into the new one, things definitely need to go.