Full cupboards and an empty wardrobe

Dear Dave,

I'm exhausted. That's all the stuff emptied out of the kitchen and office, ready for the destruction and appliance-shuffling involved in fitting a whole new kitchen. I've also stripped the kitchen walls of the kids' paintings, a layer of horrible vinyl wallpaper we were hiding under the paintings and two even more hideous layers of paper concealed beneath that.

I've learnt two things:

1. We have a lot of stuff. These days, Sarah and I normally keep nearly as many possessions in a third of our house as we had altogether when we first moved to Edinburgh.
   
   This is scary in so many different ways.
2. Ten years ago, before I became a housedad, I had three types of clothes - smart clothes for work, casual clothes for most of the rest of the time and old clothes for doing DIY.
   
   Now I merely have clothes.

As with so much else, I think I'll just blame the children and move on...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.