730 things — Day 68 of 365

 Today I've been thinking about storage, and how that too can become clutter of its own — the tubs, boxes, bins, baskets und so weite pouring out in mass-produced helpfulness to assist us in managing our spilling mounds of stuff. Then we end up not with fewer things and more space, but bringing home more things to help us organise and store the things we already have.

I like re-using packaging as storage, because I haven't bought it specially so I have no qualms about putting it out for recycling or tearing it up for kindling when something changes to make it no longer useful. Shoe boxes make particularly good multi-purpose storage.

The things for which I need storage in my room are clothes, stationery and a few sewing things, toiletries and supplements, and a considerable collection of toys to photograph for stories. Of those items, the category I need least and should leave behind if the house burned down, are the toys. But then there's Marie Kondo's question, "Does this spark joy?" The toys and the stories serve no practical purpose, earn no money, take up time and space — they are the ideal minimalist target for elimination. And yet, when so much has gone, I continue to make room for them, because they spark joy in me and in others, the stories they reveal in the world inspire reflection and insight; they enrich the imagination, they do good. And that's why I keep them, even though they take up a lot of my space. I know I won't always keep them. The time will come for them to travel on. But for now they live with me.

The toys just occupy a shelf (actually, a shelf-and-a-bit). They have few belongings — the clothes I made them, a cooking pot, a small collection of books, and some wool threads for their fake fire. 

My clothes are mostly organised into packing cubes, which I find very helpful. My stationery lives in two sets of plastic office drawers, along with the sewing things. 

My supplements — gosh, I wish they didn't come in such massive bottles! — are at present stuffed into a collection of plastic boxes that really belong in the kitchen for occasional food storage by everyone in the house. I haven't finished rationalising this category, yet. There's a few things I'm finishing off that I don't take on a regular basis, which I got because they boost the immune system, as a precaution when the pandemic infection rate was high. I do have quite a few regular supplements, though (which I certainly miss if I stop taking them) to support my vascular system, and my liver and gall-bladder — those are my health areas where I need a bit of help. But my goal is to have the fewest possible bottles, in the tidiest possible storage. Alongside them, my toiletries (skin cream, shampoo, dental hygiene stuff) live in their own plastic box handy for ferrying them to and from the bathroom. 

Once I am satisfied with the harmonious organisation of all this, I'll take a photo to show you. It's not quite there yet — on a sudden inspiration at twelve o'clock last night, I moved everything around.

But moving on things no longer needed on the journey continues.

I had three of these jugs.

Two, I sent on their way some time ago. But when it came time for them to go, I realised I didn't really need the third one either. It's yet another example of useful storage that is itself, in a sense, merely unnecessary clutter.

In the same way, I kept this useful little box, and printed off a photo of a rug to stick to it, thus upcycling it into a home altar — I was showing children at church how they could do this, at the time. 

Once I'd made it I liked it, so I kept it — a familiar path to tread. It felt sad to put it out in the recycling bin. But in the end I re-purposed it as attractive and sturdy packaging for something else mailed out into the world. I took off the labels from the little boxes on top and re-used them as components in a crafter's kit I made of odds and ends, for Freegle.

730 things — Day 67 of 365

Simplifying, downsizing, minimising — the journey into travelling lighter and owning less is a unfolding, a discovery, full of surprises.

People who live simply — monastics, nomads, minimalists — often make the point, when they're writing or making videos, that jettisoning possessions is no good as an end it itself — it has to be a subsidiary aspect to a different central purpose. So, for instance, a person might take their possessions right down in order to travel, or to fit into a very small dwelling so as to save money, or as a component of espousing a spiritual path (like becoming a nun).

I'm not sure what I think about that, because my own personal experience (it might be different for you) has been that I couldn't have foreseen what a journey into simplicity would expose in me, what it would reveal about others, where it would take me, what the result would be. It has had so many new vistas with every bend in the road. And nothing to regret and all of it good. It has made so much possible and brought such ease and peace.

But if there's one central purpose to it, I'd say it's how it facilities doing what you love, which is what this short video explores.

Did you like that? I found it so happy and inspiring.

Today, I am moving on something I have hung on to just because I like it a lot. I absolutely never use it (which is why it's going, but I think it's sooo sweet that it's take me a long time to let it go.

It's a nifty little bento box, with two compartments for food and a third for a dear little cutlery set, then a soft stretchy band going round to hold it all together.

I rarely travel, and when I do I tend to look forward to trying out food for sale on the journey rather than taking food from home — it's part of the fun. But for someone going to school or work every day, a bento box is probably vital.

So that's one thing. What else? 

A water bottle. 

I had three of these (this small one and two larger ones). Why? I'm not sure. I think maybe I thought this little one would be good to take with me on a journey or if I went to the theatre or something. But if I go out to the cinema or theatre, in fact I usually enjoy having a cold or hot (depending on season) drink as part of the outing. The utilitarian thing of saving money by taking water with you isn't really what I'm doing if I go out — I do so rarely, but like to make a special occasion of it. 

730 things — Day 66 of 365

This friend speaks my mind.

What a shining soul. Just beautiful.

The things I moved on today went to someone who is also beautiful, and whose life I love and revere.

We have two Orthodox friends who run a bed and breakfast place up the hill from us called St Benedict. From time to time they show us how the garden is progressing; and months ago, when we could still gather and meet, they invited us to a talk on the Eucharist by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. What he had to say was interesting, but so was the feeling in the room, being with a group of people whose spirituality was the bedrock of their everyday life. It felt very special.

In the building and restoring and gardening and hospitality, on which the strength of these friends is industriously outpoured, cloths have a role to play. 

Having wildly over-provisioned our household in the cloth department — and since the one who brings a thing home is responsible for the management thereof, at our place — I was grateful to pass these on.

730 things — Day 65 of 365

For as long as I can remember I've searched for information about people who live simply, in small places, with few possessions, to learn as much as I can from them. 

Years ago before we had the internet, I used to read magazine articles about bedouins and other people with nomadic lives. I devoured Juliette de Bairacli Levy's books, most especially her wonderful account of living as a herbalist in a cottage on the New Forest during the 1950s. I read everything I could find about Romany travellers. I loved Ina May and Stephen Gaskin's accounts of their life and work as part of a sangha (faith community or ideological community) travelling across America in a caravan of school buses. I read everything I could find about St Francis and the life of Franciscan monastics. There's a book by Giei Sato about Zen monastic life — it's called Unsui, which is the Japanese word for a novice — that I read over and over. And David Whiteland's Book of Pages also taught me a lot about staying simple in a complicated world. 

Then came the internet and the chance to see videos of Chinese Buddhist mountain-dwelling hermits, and Orthodox hermits and monastic communities, and about people making and living in tiny houses and reducing their possessions and travelling the world . . . So much to learn from! Wonderful.

Every now and then there comes along a book that's really exciting and helpful — like Fumio Sasaki's Goodbye Things or Marie Kondo's books The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying, and Spark Joy, but mostly I find what I'm searching for in YouTube videos — in effect the journalling of minimalists, or a glimpse into small dwellings. For the tiny houses my hands-down favourites are Kirsten Dirksen's channel and Bryce Kingston's Living Big in a Tiny House — and I also love Tiny House Giant Journey.

Of minimalists, my favourites are Youheum at Heal Your Living, Lefie, Lia, and a recent discovery is Roland L Banks.

Then today I came across a young man in a interview on someone else's channel giving advice about how to go about minimising, that seemed sensible and useful, so I looked him up to see what else he'd got to say. I started to watch one of his videos, got a few minutes in and turned it off. I'll explain the problem I had with it.  

The minimalist in question planned to travel ultra-light with just a back-pack and an absolute minimum of things — let's say about 23. He did give the exact number, but I've said a similar but different one, because it would be mean to give him such a bad review. So we're talking essentialism or extreme minimalism — the elite of the minimalist world!

But then it turns out, he has other stuff; not much, but some —warm clothes and so forth. And what's his plan? He's going to stash it at his mum's place. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I think minimalism and small space living are great. I think they bring freedom and possibility and peace, and greatly maximise life's many blessings. I am wholly in favour of minimalism. But I am NOT in favour of dumping your crap on some other poor soul so you can kid yourself you haven't really got it. 

As it happens, our household member who lives elsewhere has a few belongings here, but that's a different matter. For one thing, she's one of the people whose house it actually is — it's not letting me keeping her stuff here, it's her (and her sisters) letting me live here. For another thing, she tucks it away neat and tidily with a very clear awareness of making it possible for others to use the space while she's away. And for a third thing, she isn't making videos telling the world she only has 23 things when all the time she's stashing stuff in someone else's home. 

It's not a numbers game, or a competition. Minimalism is highly beneficial but shouldn't come with pressure or expectation attached. There's no need to live with 23 things; have 50, have 100, have 349. Whatever. But what is important is to take responsibility for one's own stuff, life, ecological footprint, spiritual development, and one's own impact on everything and everyone else. Living minimally to make room to share living space, or to travel the world, is worth doing. Dropping off your crap with Mum so you can make videos about how little you own is less so.

I am aware, he's very young and I'm probably being rather harsh — but please, darlings, don't do that, will you? Respecting boundaries is definitely part of the minimalist way, and obliging someone else to own/store things on your behalf is not that.

Rant over.

Today, I think it's time for some more clothes to go.

This very nice v-neck cashmere sweater, passed on to me by someone else in our family who had it passed on to her by another family member, was a good colour for me (browner than it looks in the photo), but more close-fitting than I like and I prefer crew necks or roll-necks. 

And this teddy fleece I liked a lot in terms of appearance, but it was rough and scratchy, not soft, and rather confining and unyielding. It felt less like I was wearing it and more like it had imprisoned me. It was rather hard to extricate myself from it.

I know I said light colours don't look good on me in general, but the coloration of this particular fleece was textured — calmed down by darker colours heathered/marled/mixed in. So I very much liked the way it looked, just not the experience of wearing it.

Even so, I felt sad to see these items go — they came into a "so very nearly, but sorry, not quite" category of clothing; and I prefer the "yes, absolutely" sort.

I Freegled these.

730 things — Day 64 of 365

There's a member of my family who sometimes says she wishes she had a self-cleaning house. Look. This guy has one!!

Well, I don't know about you, but I found that absolutely fascinating! Captivating. 

I have no idea how he did it, I find I always have to sort my stuff manually . . .

And today what's on the way out of my door is a bowl I bought at some point to wash in, and a very nice little towel. 

None of us ever use either of these highly practical items. They are surplus to requirements. Off they go.

730 things — Day 63 of 365

 The challenge of today is sorting out my grandson's birthday present. He has a deep and fierce enthusiasm for transformers, and put a Dark of the Moon Megatron star-screamer on his Amazon wish list. The snag was the delivery time, which estimated a month past the actual birthday. He is a very focused person who knows exactly what he wants and is willing to wait for it (an admirable example to both his grandmothers), but even so I thought maybe I could find a version of it that might arrive quicker. And so I did, on eBay — new, but without the presentation packaging. Hmm. I consulted with his father, who thought that would be okay. So I ordered it and it came. Surprisingly, it proved more of a tussle to obtain a story he wanted by Dick King-Smith — The Fox-Busters — which I had to take two goes at ordering before I managed to wrestle it out of the ether.

So now I have the birthday loot I need to put my mind to creating satisfactory packaging. But I have a plan, that involves the box in the fridge where I keep my veggies. 

I used up the last of my sticky-backed plastic selling shoes on eBay, so I've ordered some more and when I've created a packaged gift I think looks okay, I'll show you what I did.

Somewhat to my surprise, because I am not a very loving person and because key people close to me have let me down badly and eroded my trust — I have made my inner world into something of a fortress — I find I do very much love my grandson. He is pure of heart, "an Israeli without guile", and you don't find that very often, do you?

Our family is entering Birthday Season with a vengeance now, and I have two small stashes in my cupboard waiting to be processed and dispatched to the relevant birthday persons; but in the meanwhile, regular stuff continues to leave my life.

When Tony drove across to the ex-homeless man in his new flat with the bundle of bedding yesterday, I thought he might like a pillow to go in one of his pillow-cases. I had a good one as-near-as-damn-it new, so I enrobed it in two further pillowcases and added that to his bedding mountain.

So, one pillow with two pillow-cases went out yesterday.

Frankly, I am slightly stunned by the amount of stuff that has been lurking completely unneeded in the nooks and crannies edging my life.

730 things — Day 62 of 365

 I wonder if you are a person who lives with anxiety?

Before the pandemic, many people who spent a significant time online had life-limiting disabilities, or were carers who couldn't go out much, or had conditions like ME that kept them at home, or were neuro-divergent people looking for others with whom they could more easily relate and feel understood — and many were HSPs or lived with anxiety, becoming easily overwhelmed by stimuli and interactions. Coronavirus has brought a much wider spectrum of people online. I wonder how the invisible territory of electronic human connection will reconfigure as restrictions ease.

By living very simply and keeping everything I have to deal with very small, I limit the effect on me of the anxiety that has been my lifelong companion and affects all the women in my family (daughters, sister, mother, aunts, grandmother . . .)

When something comes my way that I really feel I cannot dodge, I can manage my external conduct in the situation, but not my inner world. Yesterday I paused to consider what anxiety looks like, to me. If you do a Google search on "twisted branch" or "twisted tree", that represents it well.

Something like this.

It feels like the centre of me being fixed into a distortion too strong to resist, and at the same time like a force from above and to the left, crushing down inexorably.

I have chosen to relinquish more and more involvement, connection and possession, because these contribute to anxiety. The selective mutism and autistic burnout that have come with struggling against it are very long-term and not very worthwhile.

Persevering against the prevailing wind direction of anxiety is very draining. I give up easily when discouraged by apparently small things, because I have a powerful inner magnifier! And I leave situations suddenly. Sometimes I come back and try again, but because my choices are perplexing to others, causing bewilderment that embarrasses me which triggers further anxiety, nowadays I tend to just live quietly, and go my own way.

I find the structural quietness of a home with not much in it very calming. I love the encounters with wild animals and birds in our garden, where they feel safe. I like simple, neutral television programmes like quiz shows and documentaries about people doing their everyday jobs (air ambulance, border control, animal rescue) with a strong theme of problems being resolved and everything made okay again. And I like TV programmes about gardens and houses — anything that has no human drama.

And I am drawn to the simple peace of minimalism — here is your soft beige hoodie, here are your soft, stretchy, dark grey cords, here is your black t-shirt (with long sleeves) and your floppy lightweight sweater, here is your quiet, dark underwear. Put them on. Wash yesterday's. Hang them on the line. All done.

By any external measure, my life is very boring, but it's certainly not like that inside. For one thing, it is sustained by an unending flow of stories, and always has been. My inner world is full of people talking and laughing and interacting all day long — some are trolls, some are monks, some are soft toys — and they have lives of their own, rich with profound thinking and compelling emotion, and moments of vulnerability. Sometimes I write it down. And every single belonging of mine has an opinion. 

Some of them don't get on so well with me, and I'm sure they are glad to leave.

Today what is going from my life is a second bundle of bedding.

Where am I getting all this bedding? This particular lot I bought long ago, for a different bed in a different house, and it's travelled faithfully with me but spent most of its time like a hermit in a mountain cave, living on top of a wardrobe. And now it is ready to leave home.

Both this bundle of bedding and the one I posted about two days ago are going to a homeless man who has finally managed to get himself somewhere to live, and is putting together what he needs to make a home. God bless him; may he thrive and prosper, may he be comfortable, may he be peaceful, may he be safe.

730 things — Day 61 of 365

Here is someone who has taken minimalism to what feels like unimaginable levels!

I realise he is just travelling rather than actually living full-time like this, but even so! 

I was entertained and amazed by the way his clothes sat on him just like normal clothes and yet he kept producing more and more items from his pockets like Mary Poppins getting articles of furniture out of her carpet bag.

The world is full of astonishing things.

He has a page itemising his possessions here.

Today, I am sending on their way the following items: a cream fleece top and a beige gilet.

I got them both from private sellers on eBay and the gilet was a bit meh (well worn), but the top was lovely — very soft and velvety — and both were microfibre fleece, so were easy to wash, quick to dry, resistant to stains and virtually indestructible. What's not to like?

Well, I think I must have been channelling my mother when I got these, because they are the kind of colours she always went for — soft, light, warm tones that suit a person who is a Spring on the colour categorisations.

At first when I had these garments I was pleased with them, because they did actually look nice on me. But they also brought with them the realisation that light colours have the same effect on me as bright colours. It's not that I dislike them but their vibration is louder and stronger than mine, and after a very short while they make me feel extremely tired. 

I really hope I have now abidingly learned the lesson that I need to stick to dark, quiet colours. Not necessarily all black or all grey, just not light, bright, loud, patterned or in any other way at all eye-catching.

730 things — Day 60 of 365

I can't stand the noise of the vacuum cleaner, and nor can our cat Miguel. Because of a foolish early choice when we moved in here — I thought fitted carpets would be way cheaper than replacing 1970s chipboard floors with reclaimed wood; I was wrong — we do have fitted carpet in some places still, making a vacuum cleaner (almost) necessary, but Tony is willing to do that particular chore, thank heaven.

However my room and the bathrooms, the passage through from the front door, the kitchen and the studio all have hard floors, so I can sweep those and then wash them.

So my cleaning kit is a rag — or disposable wipes if we happen to have any left over from some source, but I no longer buy them; or paper towel I can then use as kindling for the fire if I have some particular reason for using that rather than a rag (if Miguel threw up or something) — and then one of our two highly prized Japanese hoki brooms. 

These are not especially expensive but hard to come by. Every now and then someone in Japan (or China) takes it into their head to sell some through Amazon or eBay, but not very often. If you search on "Japanese broom" on Etsy, they have a lovely selection there, including some at very affordable prices. I know this, because I've just looked — it hadn't occurred before to me to look on Etsy for brooms.

At the moment we have an accumulation of bottles of cleaning stuff to work through — Ecover multi-surface spray and orange oil for the floor and so on — but I think I might do as Youheum has, and go on to dilute vinegar and essential oils, once I've used up what we have. I'll be careful which essential oils I use, though, because (as she mentions) many are highly toxic for cats; the list is long and I can't remember them all, but eucalyptus makes cats ill, and it's one you might well choose to incorporate into house-cleaning mixtures. I wonder if you can get catnip oil? That should be okay, and smell nice. Catnip smells like incense.

I am very intrigued by the Scrubba wash bag, and have put one on my watch list on Amazon — I like the Scrubba Bag Tactical that comes in a quiet shade of brown, rather than the bright green one. A German reviewer on Amazon recommends that if you use this method of doing your laundry then you do well to also get a micro-fibre towel and use it to wrap-and-wring your laundered items to dry them off a bit before hanging out. If you do that, then hand-washing becomes as effective as machine washing but without needing to have the bulk and noise and expense of the machine. If you wash something big like a duvet, the public laundromats are a back-up. 

But though I am drawn to the idea of purchasing a Scrubba bag and microfibre towel, something (well, two things actually) gives me pause. The first is that I already have microfibre clothing, and feel guilty enough about that because the fibres are getting into the water courses and turning us and our fish slowly into plastic, aren't they? The other caution is that a) I already have a perfectly good cotton towel which dries pretty quick on the line, and b) this last fifty or so years I have been hand washing things with perfectly satisfactory results, in the sink, with no Scrubba Bag. If I go away from home I a) will most likely stay in a Travelodge that has a sink just like at home, b) will probably not try to wash anything until I go home, and c) will be most unlikely ever to go camping and won't attempt any laundry while there, if I do. I strongly suspect the Scrubba Bag is, for me, a let's-all-be-like-Youheum fantasy, and to be resisted. Ditto the microfibre towel. Anyway, we have a washing machine in our shared house. Sometimes I use that, sometimes I wash my clothes by hand.

What I'm moving on today is a bundle of bedding — my spare sheets and duvet cover. 

This bundle includes more than two items, but there's only one picture because they are all incorporated into one pack.

So here's another (related) picture (calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh).

I have for some time been wanting to get rid of this bedding, but hesitated to do so because there are pros and cons.

On the plus side, it is warm and cosy, because it's made of flannelette, though there's a regular cotton flat sheet in the bundle too. On the minus side, I dislike the colour and general appearance — I usually put my Tibetan "yak" blanket over the top when that bedding is in use, so I don't have to look at it. "Yak" is in inverted commas because these blankets, though they are indeed from Tibet, are made of wool from acrylic yaks. It is possible to buy blankets made from yak wool, but if the ones you are contemplating have groovy colourful Indian patterns and cost about £22 on eBay, let me tell you now that what you will be getting in this instance is acrylic. But I digress.

The other thing is that most of what I have fits nicely into the storage space I am willing to retain, now I've moved on several sets of shelves, but only if I don't keep the spare bedding bundle — because it's bulky and takes up a significant chunk of space.

I have hesitated over this for about a year, because it means when I wash my sheets (not all that often as it happens, certainly not every week like my mother did) they need to be out on the line and back on the bed by nightfall if I have only one set. But why not? Within the span of time I'm likely to wash them, there's bound to be at least one dry, breezy day, is there not? So though I've thought about this a long time, asking myself, Are you sure?, the answer turns out to be, "Yes".

730 things — Day 59 of 365

 Did you ever have a go at scratchboard/scraperboard art?

There are some sophisticated and very grown-up forms of it that depend on actual artistic ability. YouTube has tutorials about how to do it (one chosen at random here). The basic idea is scratching away a dark surface to reveal a light base underneath. It's a form of engraving.

When I was a child I was occasionally given a kiddies' version of scraper-board — all you did was scratch off the entirety of a black surface to reveal a picture underneath; much like the scratchcard option of entering a lottery.

Sometimes I ask myself, why have I always been so drawn to minimalism and radical simplicity? I have things, I play with things, I try things out, I like to be resourced and also to see that everyone else has what they need and they're okay — but I never want to keep anything. I always want to move on, and I am happiest with a bare minimum. I don't want to hoard stuff; I don't even like saving money. I prefer the idea of flow, currency, a resource stream where people take what they want and pass on what they don't need and refrain from accumulation, stay free.

It occurs to me from time to time that my strong attraction to minimalism may be pathological — like bulimics feeling the need to make themselves vomit. And I accept that it may be so, and I know from observing others that the last one to know they have a problem is usually the person who has it. And part of me says, so what? It lets me live in a very small space, I pass on things others are very keen to own, I give away a lot of resources of one kind or another, I don't need very much; how can there be a problem with that?

I've asked myself occasionally what I am trying to achieve. Many people are drawn to minimalism so they can travel a lot, or retire early or save up to buy a house and start a family. I rarely go anywhere (nor want to), I am already retired, and I have raised my family.

In part, I am getting ready for the end of my life. Whenever I die (and once you're in your mid-sixties you've entered the mortality band for sure) I want to evaporate like a wraith of smoke and leave as little as possible for others to clear up and sort out. 

Part of it is that the people I admire — Jesus, Gandhi, the Buddha, Lao Tsu, St Francis — all lived with very little, and it both contributed to and emanated from who and what they were/are. Somehow it is a key aspect, and I'd like to understand why. There is something beautiful in the monastic way, the way of the hermit and the sage, that I love.

And then I think it's a kind of scraper-board activity. I want to see what's underneath all the stuff on top — not the grown-up type of scraper-board where you have to make your own picture, I don't think I'm clever enough for that; the child's sort where you just patiently and carefully scratch away all the crud on top, and see a picture emerging that you knew was there but couldn't see until all the surface is taken away. I want to find out what lives underneath the patina of stuff that overlays our life. I want to see the hidden picture.

Of course it may turn out that there isn't one, that you were supposed to make your own picture, and all I'll be left with is a blank white space instead of a blank black one. 

Well, for today, what's leaving my life is a large bed base. 

Tony made this for me. It's the same as the one he made for my room in the house, which looks like this.

If you have been reading this blog a long time you'll know that at the bottom of our garden is a tiny house with a wood stove in it because I wanted to live in a tiny house. But when it was actually a physical reality, I found I wanted to be close to the people I live with, and I felt nervous about living in a shed at the bottom of the garden because spates of shed-burglaries are a thing even though we haven't had one in a while, and also damp created a constant problem of mildew in that space. So we keep it as a summer house and a wood store and a place to practise musical instruments and record songs, and sometimes to stay overnight. But at some point Tony made me a base for a bed there, and as none of us actually sleeps there except very occasionally (when a floor bed will do), I have come to accept the space is more useful than the bed. I felt sorry he went to all that trouble for something that wasn't used — but that is a drawback for the people who travel with me. They always urge me to "keep it this time", but I never do. That's just how I am.

That's something big, here's something small. A packet of what they call "pop-socks", nylon tights but socks. 

At some point I thought they'd be useful but in reality I always and only wear the socks Alice makes me. I never even opened the packet. I got them passed on by a private seller on eBay who obviously also thought they'd be useful and found it was not so. I moved them on via Freegle with a bunch of women's clothes that someone put up her hand to receive.