It's not you number one, it's me - and your stuff, writes Jo Malone
My friend Terie loves being able to see the vacuum lines in her carpet. Apparently there's quite a knack to it and if you angle the vacuum just right you get perfect triangles.
She points them out in her living room, and indeed, vacuuming has definitely happened. But at Terie's house it's not so much the vacuuming but the lack of stuff on the floor that interests me.
She has space all over her house to make whatever patterns she likes in her carpets. So where are the books, the magazines, the lists, the half written thank you letters, the toys, the odd sock box, the might-go-to-charity boxes, the stash of bags for life, the pile for ironing, the general family life clobber? Where does she put it?
It's all a bit of a contrast to our house, which quite frequently looks – as the gorgeous man puts it: 'as if someone has picked it up, shaken it and rolled it down a hill.'
We do have a lot of stuff, and there doesn't seem to be a home for everything so vacuum lines are more swirls around things rather than creations of art on the floor.
Home has been particularly loaded this summer, and while I do try to stay away from the blame game it does seem to have coincided with number one's return from a uni year in Canada.
Her room was full already; not much has been moved out since she was about 15. She hasn't grown a great deal so it's been pointless to pass on clothes that still fit or that little sisters Keola or Thalia may like one day. We had already tucked boxes of her belongings – kitchen paraphernalia, duvets and essentials from her first uni year in halls at Plymouth – around the house wherever we could.
She collected quite a few momentos from Canada – she is my daughter after all – and arrived back with a mountain of stuff. She decided that before she headed back to uni for the third year that her bedroom needed an overhaul from teen room to ex-teen room, but this had to be fitted around visiting friends, family and a good amount of little-sisters-sitting.
Sorting out in a room already jam-packed and with no floor space wasn't going to happen, so we've had boxes and bags and piles and more boxes spread pretty much all around the house to give her space.
But as I'm tripping over a box of shoes, or a bag she's packing or unpacking and there's a random pile of clothes on my bed, bags of unwanted but sorted clothes destined for a car boot sale that probably won't happen until next summer in the bathroom, boxes of unsorted clothes and shoes almost everywhere I look, a pile of coats next to the shoe rack and a bunch of kitchen utensils, tea towels and bowls that may, or may not, be going back to Plymouth Uni dumped on the gym mat, I'm more than a bit fed up. I've just been to Terie's clear house and today I want triangles in my carpets too.
'Sunny, your stuff, I've had enough,' I moan.
'It's alright, I'll be gone soon,' she says, looking upset.
Oh Sunny, I love it when you're here. I don't want you to go – just your stuff.
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