# 31 The Nesting Instinct

Like most creatures on this earth, as spring approaches I get the urge to nest. I take this as being the last vestiges of what I consider my maternal instinct. It never goes any further. I am not encouraged by plants sprouting in the garden, new born kittens or any other cute baby animal, to embrace motherhood. But I do the nesting thing and I do it with boundless enthusiasm.

For me, as well as the urge to spring clean in the house intensely and begin an attack on the ravaged remains of my garden (post winter and bantam hen assault), I want to move all my furniture around.

This despite having little room for manoeuvre since de-cluttering would be far more effective than simply moving it into more manageable shapes and having a good hoover. However, moving it around is currently where I am at and so yesterday it happened.

I managed to shift quite a lot and had I been throwing things out my house would now be considerably emptier. Sadly this is not the case but at least this now gives the illusion of de-cluttering, which in the short term at least helps to keep me sane and enables me to compartmentalise the bits that need dealing with - since compartmentalising everything is my way of coping with most things.

Life is very complicated and it has a lot of different areas that need dealing with on a daily basis. Shoving it into small boxes and representing it with a number of neon post it notes in my bulging filofax means I can methodically work through it all.

So this week I have moved an Edwardian dressing table and a bookshelf into my bedroom, moved the costume rails around upstairs so that the lengthening days of light can finally penetrate the room and I have moved several bookshelves and a dining table about downstairs.

Everything feels bigger, cleaner and a bit different. It'll do for now. Now for the garden.....