When I retired from paid work about five years ago I resolved to try to keep some structure in my working life. I may have given up paid work but I have not given up work and do a variety of things in charity, civic life and for myself such as my writing. My solution was to give each day of the week a specific task. Monday is money day which means that's when I deal with accounts, pay bills, manage investments, try to reduce costs in various ways and anything else to do with money. Tuesday is decluttering day which is the main subject of this blog to which I will return. Wednesday is writing day which is when I write my blogs such as this one and any other semi -formal writing. I am maintaining Thursday as my city day on which I do various tasks in the civic city including my Livery Company, my Past Masters Association, three Ward Clubs and the City Livery Club that I belong to. Friday is my free day except it is also the one which I do the weekly shopping for our household. Saturday and Sunday remain conventional weekend days and have not changed.

Now this structure may sound a little rigid and of course life is not like that. I am not completely in charge of my diary. My various livery meetings for example might be on any day of the week but I'm just trying to keep an eye on what proportion of my time goes into these different activities. I have found the structure very helpful but perhaps the biggest challenge I've had is decluttering.

My wife and I both recognise that our house which is quite large is overcrowded with forms of clutter that have built up over the nearly 30 years that we have lived here. The examples are many.  We have numerous albums full of printed photographs although now like most people we have the modern electric cameras. Here the clutter finishes up in our computers and we rarely seek to classify or organise it let alone look at it whereas at least with our traditional album, old fashioned though they may be, it's relatively easy to simply pull one out particularly when we have visitors and show them a sequence of photographs of a holiday or family event.

No doubt we both have too many clothes although I rarely these days find a need to buy new clothes unless something is genuinely worn out and needs replacing. On the other hand we both have wardrobes full of things some of which never get worn. It ought to be a simple task to come to terms with this and say ‘that’s going to the charity shop’ or ‘that's going to the dump’ but even such a task as that seems to be much easier to put off.

To take on the responsibility a year or so ago we hired a local consultant who specialises in decluttering. She came to visit us for a four-hour session of what she called a home organisation audit. She made it very clear that we did not need to do anything before she arrived; that she would not be here to judge us but simply to offer tips and advice to help us achieve our goals and she made the very important point that less is more. She went through the house with us looking at every room and while some she found reasonably well organised the two rooms where she found the biggest problems were our respective studies both of which overflow with all sorts of paper going back decades. Most of this is no longer looked at or needed but it occupies space and there really isn't room for anymore. She was a very nice lady and gave us a very helpful report. She likes to describe her process as blissful organisation.

I use a Day Timer as my preferred type of diary and the Day Timer requires updating every month as it simply provides a monthly diary and you need to transfer information from one month to the next. This may sound tedious but it means that every month I check that my time is being well-planned and my priorities are optimised. Every month in the activities which I prioritise I always write D for Declutter, dump, donate, recycle, sell and shred or give away something each and every day. But I don't quite manage it.

One area where I have had some success is in seeking to declutter my bookshelves. In the house we have until recently had over 3000 books, most of which are mine. I did succeed in reducing that number by 500 through taking some to Oxfam whose book shops are the second largest chain in the country after Waterstones. Some of their book shops will take books from you and as they sell them will give you a share of the proceeds. While other books of course have very little resale value and therefore they just want to take them as a charitable donation.  So we still have 2500 books and the bookshelves still look full and having made quite a big effort spending quite a lot of time on it I really think my next priority is to find other ways of decluttering.  My primary focus should be on all that paper in the study.

 In the process of going through our books I found one that I had completely forgotten that I had. It's called Motoring - The Golden Years. It's a pictorial anthology compiled by a gentleman called Rupert Prior and it was presented to me by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu in February 1993 when I visited him at his invitation together with my wife and daughter. For some time at Sony we had been giving him some support as we developed our In Car Electronics business. The Japanese head of In Car Electronics had asked me to present Lord Montagu with the first In Car Minidisc player in the UK. He signed the book “For David Pearson with best wishes and many thanks to Sony for all their support - Montagu of Beaulieu.” He of course was famous for his creation of the National Motor Museum at the family stately home Beaulieu in Hampshire. He became probably the foremost creative thinker in the UK as to how to manage stately homes as a source of income rather than as a highly expensive cost centre. Many stately homeowners followed his example but he was doing it a long time ago. Inside the front cover of the book is a photograph of the four of us together in front of the museum and standing next to one of his many splendid cars. It has the number plate MMM 1.

So what in fact was a good example of this decluttering process was that in going through the books I found one which I had completely forgotten. It brought back the happy memories of our visit to his stately home where he and his son Ralph, who is now his successor as the 4^th Baron Montagu, gave us an excellent lunch. Over lunch Lord Montagu and I discovered that we had both been to New College, Oxford.

The book itself is not one I would read again.  It’s just not really a subject in which I have a great deal of interest but having said that it is beautifully presented with some outstanding illustrations going back over more than 100 years of motoring history.  Many of the illustrations are actually from early adverts of brands like Fiat and Chrysler that are still with us but there are many more of brands long since forgotten,