Perhaps the cooler and rainier days will keep me tucked up inside simply staring at the problem and I will stay enthused about the lightening-up process. Just this past week I have strengthened the savings account a smidgeon and freshened up one tiny segment of my office with the help of both Ebay (bless them) and the bored shoppers who were trapped in the house in front of their computers over the long Easter weekend.

This week it is BAGS–BAGS–BAGS on sale and I would like to know just HOW in the world we managed to accumulate so many pieces of luggage in the last 15-plus years together!

Just too darned many BAGS!

Out they go and off to some good new home where happy little travellers can board their planes safe in the knowledge that they have saved a bit off the luggage bill and perhaps that will fund a croissant and cafe creme or deux in Paris. (sigh!) Don’t even get me started on how much I would personally love to be back in Paris right now!

And photo editing — I am seriously behind on photo editing. And there are at least three magazine articles to submit proposals for to editors.

So yes — I am fully engaged in life and tasks and sorting and more. But my body feels better already simply due to the downshift in temperatures. Ahhhh!

Now where was that cashmere cardigan to ward off the evening chill? Guess it is time to sort out the closets, too!

Part of the ongoing purge process has been facing some personal truths about what I would like to do (in theory!) versus what I will actually do — and one of those areas is cooking.

I spent quite a lot of time whipping up just the right this or that when my children were small. They were the focus of my life back then and I was less involved in artistic pursuits like writing or my currently non-stop photography. Perhaps as I got older I also just lost interest in the whole process — period — and I am now perfectly content to eat a quick stir-fry dinner or a salad and something on the side. It’s boring, but it IS fast and healthy!

I’d be willing to bet that I am representative of rather a lot of us who just swoon over some of the cooking shows on television and we long to whip those kinds of recipes up at the drop of the chef’s hat. But reality (or waning interest!) seeps in and many of us realise that we are in love with the IDEA of cooking gourmet meals, but we simply don’t have the time or energy to do that 99% of the time. So those gorgeous, glossy, heavy hardback books sit on the shelf and laugh at us when we never open them.

Deciding that I wanted to be very truthful about interests versus action, I have begun to load cookbook after cookbook onto Ebay along with the last of the unsold dvds which I will never watch again. And I had never imagined how liberating it would feel!

So yes — Nigella drove away. Her cookbook Forever Summer was the very first one to sell this morning and I am thrilled that some lovely people down in Melbourne will (hopefully!) soon be implementing some of the gorgeous recipes within that unused book. Bon Appetit!