Now that everything is cleaned up my desk seems strangely empty. Because I'm used to being so hemmed in and now I've tidied everything away and moved what's left around I can't touch type properly. You get used to the visual location of the screen and the gubbins around it to know where to place your fingers. When all that changes it takes, well, about as long as it took to type this paragraph to get used to the new set up.

I've been having some sort of Autumn spring clean over the last couple of weeks and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. The books, CDs, DVDs, games, pictures and hardware were easy, all the fluffy stuff less so. Everything I don't wear anymore is now safely boxed away to be taken to the charity shop at some point, and everything else is either racked (shirts, jackets, waistcoats, trousers and suits), placed in drawers (socks, underwear) or sitting in clean/non clean piles (t-shirts, jeans, shorts, towels, linen, jumpers).

But don't get me started on ties, belts, gloves, hats, scarves, sock suspenders, spats and combinations. Not to mention knick-knacks, momentos, gee-gaws, souvenirs, tat, rubbish and bibelots. Alright , I made some of those up, but the problem really is what to do with all the miscellaneous stuff. A big pile of towels, 24 books on architecture and 200 CDs : no problem. A pair of wooly mittens, a jar of loose screws and a badge saying "Radio B92 NAD BEOGRADAM" : what the fuck am I meant to do with that??

Life really does reflect taxonomy in this wayl. The gross bulk of stuff is straightforward enough to categorise, but it's all to easy to end up with a huge file / box, just marked 'miscellaneous' if you're not careful.