Everything is drying up

You have left in your social life

Constant arguments

No future together

Reduced family attachments

No response from your partner

Cheated by your partner

Woman #1 with straight long and thick hair

straight long and thick hair

Woman #2 with short and straight hair

short and straight hair

Woman #3 with mid length and wavy hair

mid length and wavy hair

Woman #4 with fine, short and wavy hair

short and wavy hair

Woman #5 with natural thick curly hair

natural thick curly hair

Woman #6 with thin but voluminous hair

thin but voluminous hair

Want to be happy? Chuck out every single possession you don't love. JAN MOIR did and now she has just two dinner plates left

• Jan Moir's house was stuffed with collectibles and assorted clutter
• After a flood ruined her bed linen, she realised life was easier without it 
• She chucked everything that wasn't vital to her new, streamlined existence 
• Marie Kondo has become famous for inventing this tidying method         
•  My name is Jan Moir and I am a junkaholic. Until all too recently, my home was stuffed with collectibles and assorted clutter.
  A French egg-holder with hen-shaped handles. Embossed stationery boxes with silk tassels. A sweet collection of silver ice buckets. Dozens of blankets, cupboards crammed with towels, enough bed linen to run a small hotel.
  If the entire cast of Les Miserables had moved in overnight, I could have accommodated them all, sheets-wise - and given them each a boiled egg in an amusing ceramic egg cup for breakfast.
  
  I was in the grip of what I now see was an addiction, a very modern affliction. I wasn't exactly a hoarder but equally, I never let anything go. I used to think it was right and proper to keep every book I ever read, including the mangiest paperback from three decades ago.

  My thinking was, why have one pen in a jar on your desk when you could have a dozen, including that novelty one with the Donald Duck head and three from hotel chains? And I'm not throwing out that red glitter glue pen, it will come in handy next Christmas.

  Ditto the three pairs of secateurs, even though I no longer had a garden. Likewise the never-worn clothes and the sad, unloved handbags that sulked in a corner of my wardrobe like leather orphans. There are only two of us but my house was full of stuff, stuff, stuff like that, silting up at the seams, ready to withstand the siege that never came, a landfill of life that grew every year.

  
  

  Then I saw the light. Or rather, I had the light thrust upon me. My circumstances over the past six years have been a continual boomerang of moving into one home while the other was refurbished, moving back, moving out again, moving somewhere else.

  And each time we moved, the cupboard spaces seemed to get smaller and the surroundings less hospitable to the cavalcade of - let's be honest - junk I was carting around. It became a pain. I began to ask myself, do I really need all this rubbish? For what good purpose?

  The turning point came when we had a flood in a storage cupboard which ruined all my lovely bed linen, collected over many years. I spent a long time secretly mourning my Italian 500-threaders, but it changed everything.

  Realisation dawned that not only could I survive without my beloved velvet counterpane and four sets of bobble-trimmed pillowcases, but life was actually much easier without them.

  Less choice but more space. Cry freedom from quilts! And from the wreckage of those sodden sheets, I emerged a new woman; a born-again minimalist.

  Once you decide to reduce everything cluttering up in your life, there is no shortage of people out there to help you.

  A woman called Marie Kondo has become famous for inventing the Kon-Mari method of tidying. In her bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art Of Decluttering And Organising, she argues that unless you truly, deeply, madly love an item, it has no place in your home. Let's hope she makes an exception for husbands.

  Marie also shows her readers how to fold jumpers into neat, woolly packages and advises them to avoid buying fancy storage solutions such as hampers and hat boxes because they only encourage hoarding.

  Flamboyant interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen preaches the same mantra. He never designs bathrooms with lots of shelves and cupboards because 'they'll only get filled up with bottles of gunk'.

  Meanwhile, self-help guru Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project has sold millions of copies. She believes that happiness begins with a tidy wardrobe and a calm home.

  To this end she subdivides clutter into categories such as crutch clutter (things you wear but know you shouldn't, like horrible but comfy leggings), buyer's remorse clutter (hanging on to expensive bad purchases because you can't admit you made a mistake), aspirational clutter (high heels you can't walk in, a tapestry you never finished), freebie clutter (hideous family gifts) and nostalgic clutter (souvenirs from an earlier life). It has one thing in common - it all has to go.

  Each of these good thoughts made perfect sense to me. Especially the buyer's remorse.

  The most expensive thing in my wardrobe was a beautiful pink jacket purchased in a moment of madness in New York and never worn. It made me look like a peeled armadillo - but I couldn't admit the mistake, so I kept it for years. Once I had packed it off to Dress For Success (a charity which helps to empower women by supplying them with professional attire), I was on my way.
  

  As the months marched on, I learnt to live without. Clothes were brutally culled into a capsule wardrobe; boring but brilliant in the morning rush.

  Boxes of books were taken to charity shops - although I can never part with my copy of The Great Gatsby, so don't ask.

  In the kitchen, I chucked or donated everything that wasn't vital to my new, streamlined existence. The pasta-maker, the Jamie Oliver flavour-shaker, the unnecessary fruit-slicers, the surfeit of cutlery, crockery and pans.

  Now we could never have anyone round for dinner because we only have enough basics for the two of us. But why not? We always went out instead of entertaining at home, anyway.

  

  Look around at my shelves and surfaces and you will find not one ornament, knick-knack or keepsake in my entire home. What is all that stuff anyway? It's only showing off. Photographs and treasured mementoes are packed away in a box, desks clear of clutter to promote clear thoughts.

  Visitors think we have just moved in or are in the process of moving out, but that is the way we have come to like it. I love that transient feeling that living without brings; the belief that this place is not the end or the final destination, that you are not tied by 1,000 invisible threads to 1,000 curated objects that you've convinced yourself you love.

  Instead, at any given moment I could simply pack a (small) suitcase and walk out of the door without regret.

  Recently, the fashion and homewares designer Orla Kiely declared that British people hoard pointless clutter and have 'too much stuff'. It's a bit rich coming from someone with a homewares line featuring more This country is a rubbish tip of useless gadgets and curios impulse-bought and crammed into cupboards or dubiously displayed on mantelpieces  than 50 products, including a flower-print garden bin, but she's right.

  This country is a rubbish tip of useless gadgets and curios impulse-bought and crammed into cupboards or dubiously displayed on mantelpieces. The same objects move, like a shifting sand dune of tat, from home clear-out to car boot sale to market stall to auction house to antique shop to jumble sale to charity shop, then back under the sink again.

  Kiely confessed that her products will ultimately contribute to this surfeit of bric-a-brac, but she is unrepentant.

  'I am adding to it,' she admitted. 'But I hope people who buy my stuff will keep it for ever.'

  Yet, just as one man's objet trouvé is another man's ashtray, one woman's prized leaf-print Kiely napkin is another's despised duster. And still the mountain of jumble gets bigger and bigger.

  Programmes such as BBC2's Antiques Road Trip really don't help because they glorify junk. It is a format which finds antiques experts - sometimes celebrities - competing against each other to buy stuff nobody wants, which is then sold at auction and bought by people with nothing better to do.

  In one recent show, the team gaily bought a brass trumpet, a sandalwood lizard, a pair of brass dogs and a Murano glass bowl big enough to bathe a baby.

  With the best will in the world, none of these things would pass the William Morris test: 'Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' Yet in the space of one short television show they were purchased, sold and purchased again; more jumble to tumble onto the national pile.

  Please don't think I'm being a terrible snob about this. People love different things, even ugly things, for all sorts of complicated reasons - for all sorts of lovely reasons. And there is nothing wrong with that.

  It's just that so much antiquing and acquiring and shopping and displaying and cupboard-filling is just a waste of time, a reassurance of your own existence that you can, believe me, live without.

  Once upon a time I, too, believed that surrounding myself with a comfort blanket of things, that suffocating under stuff, was the outward expression of happy consumerism, the only way to live.

  Now I live without clutter, I realise I am so much happier without it all, and that's the way forward.

  You still don't agree? Come over to my place and we can have some tea and a chat about it. You'll have to bring your own cup.

  
  

High-sugar diet is as 'damaging to your brain as extreme stress or ABUSE'

Sugar found to be as damaging as early life stress, scientists discover

Chronic sugar intake triggers changes to hippocampus the area of the brain, which is important for both memory and stress

Experts say changes noted in the brain are of 'great concern' given the high consumption of sugary drinks, particularly among young people

Jayanthi Maniam and Professor Margaret Morris were involved in the study at the University of New South Wales, Australia

   

There has been a seismic shift in the dietary landscape in recent years.

Where once fat was the much maligned enemy, now scientists are turning their attention to sugar.

It is now widely accepted that more must be done to encourage people to reduce their sugar intake.

So much so that dietary guidelines in the UK and US have been altered to reflect the changing scientific evidence.

The World Health Organization recommends no more than 10 per cent of a person's daily energy should come from added sugars, or those found naturally in juices and honey.

That equates to around 50g or 12 teaspoons a day.

While the links between a high-sugar diet and obesity are well documented, in light of the mounting evidence, experts are turning their attention to the other ways sugar can affect the body.

In a recent study, a team at the University of New South Wales in Australia, found sugar is as damaging to the brain as extreme stress or abuse.

Here research associate, Jayanthi Maniam and profressor of pharmacology, Margaret Morris discuss their findings.

We all know that cola and lemonade aren’t great for our waistline or our dental health.

But our new study has shed light on just how much damage sugary drinks can also do to our brain.

The changes we observed to the region of the brain that controls emotional behaviour and cognitive function were more extensive than those caused by extreme early life stress.

It is known that adverse experiences early in life, such as extreme stress or abuse, increase the risk of poor mental health and psychiatric disorders later in life.

The number of traumatic events - accidents; witnessing an injury; bereavement; natural disasters; physical, sexual and emotional abuse; domestic violence and being a victim of crime - a child is exposed to is associated with elevated concentrations of the major stress hormone, cortisol.

There is also evidence that childhood maltreatment is associated with reduced brain volume and that these changes may be linked to anxiety.

Looking at rats, we examined whether the impact of early life stress on the brain was exacerbated by drinking high volumes of sugary drinks after weaning. 

As females are more likely to experience adverse life events, we studied female Sprague-Dawley rats.

To model early life trauma or abuse, after rats were born half of the litters were exposed to limited nesting material from days two to nine after birth.

They then returned to normal bedding until they were weaned. 

The limited nesting alters maternal behaviour and increases anxiety in the offspring later in life.

At weaning, half the rats were given unlimited to access to low-fat chow and water to drink, while their sisters were given chow, water and a 25 per cent sugar solution that they could choose to drink.

Animals exposed to early life stress were smaller at weaning, but this difference disappeared over time. 

Rats consuming sugar in both groups (control and stress) ate more calories over the experiment.

The rats were followed until they were 15 weeks old, and then their brains were examined. 

As we know that early life stress can impact mental health and function, we examined a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is important for both memory and stress. 

Four groups of rats were studied – control (no stress), control rats drinking sugar, rats exposed to stress, and rats exposed to stress who drank sugar.

We found that chronic consumption of sugar in rats who were not stressed produced similar changes in the hippocampus as seen in the rats who were stressed but not drinking sugar. 

Early life stress exposure or sugar drinking led to lower expression of the receptor that binds the major stress hormone cortisol, which may affect the ability to recover from exposure to a stressful situation.

Another gene that is important for the growth of nerves, Neurod1, was also reduced by both sugar and stress. 

Other genes important for the growth of nerves were investigated, and just drinking sugar from a young age was sufficient to reduce them.

The rats were exposed to high sugar intakes during development, and the impact of the sugar is worrying as it may affect brain development, although further work is required to test this.

In this study, combining sugar intake and early life stress did not produce further changes in the hippocampus, but whether this remains the case over time is unclear.

The changes in the brain induced by sugar are of great concern given the high consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, with particularly high consumption in children aged nine to 16 years. 

If similar processes are at play in humans to what was found in our rat study, reducing the consumption of sugar across the community is important.

The fact that drinking sugar or exposure to early life stress reduced the expression of genes critical for brain development and growth is of great concern. 

While it is impossible to perform such studies in humans, the brain circuits controlling stress responses and feeding are conserved across species.

People who were exposed to early life trauma have changes in the structure of their hippocampus. In humans, those consuming the most 'western' diet had smaller hippocampal volumes, in line with data from animal models.

Taken together, these findings suggest future work should consider possible long-term effects of high sugar intake, particularly early in life, on the brain and behaviour.