"You're throwing away my youth!"

There were a tense few days last year after Ms. K and I moved in together where, frankly, neither of us had much to say to each other. She took one look at all my accumulated crap, contemplated the reality of having it merged with her own, and figured that she wasn't impressed. Cue a night of her sleeping on the couch followed by a trip to our new storage unit, our love finally saved.

But before you think Ms. K bullied me into letting go of sentiment, the pendulum eventually swung the other way. It's just that her cull wasn't as dramatic as my teary eyed trips to curb with bulging trash bags because Ms. K had already done a big cull before we moved in together. Still many things remained in the way of gratuitous kitchen supplies and clothing purchased during the later years of the Clinton administration.

In the run up to our trip to Sweden and Amsterdam, it became obvious that Ms. K needed new adult clothes. With shopping bags full of purchases from a high end discount store in Gravesend, I locked my sights on the stuff that needed to go, clothes that hadn't been worn for years, holding up each offending article with no mercy.

Synthetic blend pull-over from Express? Gone.

90s era surfing logo t-shirt with arm pit stains? Gone.

Jean skirt that is so short it could be a belt? Gone.

Ms. K winced as each item went into the trash. "You're throwing away my youth!"

Whatever nostalgic argument she had, whatever story of inappropriate activities she once took part in whilst wearing said clothes, I wasn't hearing it. Payback's a bitch.