One of the positive aspects of living alone is that I do not have to have the agreement of others to organise my life and possessions. When Mr. Swiss left I began to make order. It was not easy, and I had to begin somewhere. First of all I organised our paperwork. The idea is that you keep documents for a maximum of 10 years. Of course there are exceptions, but that is the basic idea. I discovered that we had documents (tax and purchases) dating back to 1975. After a few months I had organised our files, even to the extent that in January this year, I removed all documents from 2013 and the file now begins at 2014.

I then moved onto various cupboards and places in the apartment and removed all unnecessary objects. In between I was clearing our cellar and hobby room and sorting objects that we no longer needed. The last refugium was the cellar and there I almost had a stroke when I saw what was there. Why oh why, but the words “it might come in useful” were remembered from my other half- After 55 years of collecting it never came in useful. With a little help from neighbours and my wonderful cleaning lady, we have done it. My nice Australian-Swiss neighbour moved my bed sofa and a couple of cupboards outside for the annual collection, and Lucia, my cleaning angel, who is more than a cleaner, but logician, mechanic and organiser, did the rest. I now have a cellar that I can show and almost be proud of. The only dots on the I’s is to sweep the floor when everything is organised.

Even Mr. Swiss has agreed on the organisation. And I can now relax knowing that everything is OK.