How Many Things Make a Keeping

You have three boxes. Keep, charity, skip. Your sister wrote the words on them in marker before she went back to Leeds, and now it's you and the boxes and the house. The rule is simple. If you'd miss it, keep. If someone else could use it, charity. Otherwise, skip. Your sister said it in the voice she uses for things that are simple. Start with the kitchen. The good knife, keep. The bad knives, charity, no, skip, nobody wants a bad knife. The mugs. There are thirty-one mugs. You know the one she used, the blue one with the chip, and that's keep, obviously, that's not even a question. The other thirty go in charity and you feel fine, and then you pick up the one with the cathedral on it and you remember the day she bought it, a trip you took together when you were nineteen, and it goes in keep. That's two mugs. Fine. The one with the cat. She didn't even like that mug. Someone gave it her. But she used it, you saw her use it, on the last Christmas, she had tea in it while you did the sprouts. Keep. Three. And this is where it goes. Because here's the problem with the rule. One mug is a keeping. Two is a keeping. Three is a keeping. At what number does it stop being keeping and become not clearing the house? Ten? Fifteen? There isn't a number. There's never a number. Every single mug, on its own, is a mug she drank from, and you can make the case for it, and the case is true, and if you make the case thirty-one times you have thirty-one mugs and a box that says keep with a house inside it. You put the cat mug in charity. Then take it out. Then put it back. Move on. The bedroom. Her clothes are easier, oddly, because they're all her and so none of them are, and you can put a whole wardrobe in charity in twenty minutes without feeling anything, and then a cardigan gets you, out of nowhere, the green one, and that's keep, and you sit on the bed for a bit.

The drawer of the bedside table. Reading glasses, three pairs. A paperback with a receipt in it as a bookmark. A hair clip. A card from you, from a birthday, you don't remember which, that says "Love you, Mum, see you Sunday" and nothing else. You know the argument. You've known it since you were at university. A single grain isn't a heap, and adding a grain to something that isn't a heap doesn't make it one, so there's no such thing as a heap, and yet there is sand everywhere. You thought that was clever at twenty. It is not clever in this bedroom. It is just the truth about mugs. Your sister rings. "How's it going." "Fine." "How many boxes." "Three." "I mean how many keep boxes." "One." "Really?" "One and a bit." She's quiet. Then she says, "Keep the cat mug," and you say, "How did you know about the cat mug," and she says, "Because I nearly took it on Tuesday," and neither of you says anything for a while, and the house is very quiet, and there is sand everywhere.