This morning I decided to begin my annual cull of the wardrobe... clothes that have not been worn in the last 12 months are reviewed and probably (but not always) set aside to go to a charity shop.  Perhaps it is the effect of having cleared out my Mum's flat, but this year I have felt able to be a lot more ruthless (not properly ruthless, but more so) and a lot of things I've kept out of sentimentality have found themselves consigned to the charity shop bag/box/heap and others to the bin.

The photo shows the collection of hair-slides and other hair things that had sat in a drawer for nearly six years and will never be needed again.  Why was I kepeing them?  Pure sentimentality, a reluctance to let go of the past perhaps, or maybe because many of them had associations with people or places or events.  In the end, I selected one to keep, a heavy, metal celtic knot that I hope can be converted into a brooch.

Today I also packed up the 14+ inch long plait that had been carefully stored in my underwear drawer and posted it off to The Little Princess Trust where it might find itself used to make a wig for a child experiencing hair loss.  It was a strange, slightly bittersweet moment when finally I sealed up the envelope and marched out of my front door to the Post Office to send it on its way.  Perhaps a tad hard on myself, there was a sense that the "properly grown-up" thing to have done would have been to donate the hair in September 2010.  But at that stage it was all too raw, I was too afraid of what tomorrow might bring, and somehow a long plait in a plastic bag in a knicker drawer was a source of comfort at a time when certainty, confidence and sense of identity were rapdily disappearing.  Today it was not such a big deal.  I held the plait one last time, inhaled its still sweet smell, packed it and sent it on its way.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

One thing I have been doing today is photographing things; the prize-winning jumpers I knitted as a teenager that have lain unworn for at least a decade; the hair slides that for most of my adult life were coordinated to outfits and events; the plait and its donation form just before it was packed up.  The memories can be prompted by the pictures, the actual objects can be let go, freeing whoever, one day, has to clear out my clutter from wondering why on earth this woman had a collection of hair accessories or fairisle jumpers or whatever it may have been.

A useful lesson for me, I think.