Sometime between selling the family home and buying the downsizer, my dad died. Right out of the blue. Mum was amazing. Soldiered on. Kept being an excellent parent to her three kids.

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I was 19 and had moved out of home already (something you could do at that age in the olden days). There seemed to be no interruption to the process of selling and buying.

A few weeks ago, we found a buyer for our house (or rather she found us). And as the lawyer went through all the various odds and ends, one clause triggered a flood of fears. It went something like this: if either you or your partner dies, the sale is cancelled. Turns out that wasn't quite true if you were "tenants in common". If you both die, that's a whole other ballgame.

Fortunately, here we are a few weeks later and neither of us is dead. Yet.

The process of moving is famously stressful. If you are selling your home and buying another one, you've got the job of dealing with paperwork you need a lawyer to understand. If you are renting, you've got the horror of finding another place you can afford.

But here's where we are now. We are in a place about half the size.

Talk about a task. People will always want shelves and cupboards and desks and kitchen tables. Shedding objects is no problem, really, unless that object is a piano.

Yes, getting rid of furniture was one thing. But what to do with the childhood drawings of my now adult children was quite another. How do you deal with all the stuff which stirs up your feelings.

We had all of those feeling-stirrers. Three kids. Three school journeys. Three lots of painted handprints. School reports. Three lots of signed year-six T-shirts. Trophies, ribbons and medals (turns out if you don't have a sporting bone in your body, you value your........

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