I tell you what:

[desperance]

If a person were taking himself at all seriously, once he had emptied the vasty cupboard beneath the stairs where everything begins, he would probably strip out the manky old carpet and then splash a coat of white paint all over everything. Then it might not smell quite so manky in the depths there, and it would never need doing again in all his years of life.

Luckily, of course, I am not taking myself seriously at all: just shifting stuff out and making piles all over the dining room, prior to chucking out the odd random object and shifting all the rest back in again.