Yesterday, mum and I went through almost my entire wardrobe to decide what I should take back to the UK with me. We focused on work clothes — shirts, blouses, dress pants, winter skirts, and so on.

Very soon, clothes covered almost every surface in our family room. We began with three piles: definitely take; maybe take; definitely not take. But the piles evolved. By the end of our sorting session, we had: definitely look at again and choose what to take; maybe look again; don’t take but leave in Melbourne to wear when I come home; leave for mum to wear; pass on to relatives; donate to charity.

The donate to charity pile was the largest by far. Mum would look at a shirt or a pair of pants and say, bewildered, ‘What were we thinking when we bought that? It’s so short/tight/loose/bright/complicated/ugly!’

Indeed, this kind of retrospective brings home to me how subtly influenced we all are by fashion trends. Only two or three years ago, the fashion was to have short tops that hung no further down than the hips. I remember throwing out clothes that were ugly because they were so long.

Now, we are back to long tops and suddenly, these short shirts and blouses look ridiculous. It’s the same with pants. The fashion was for close fitting pants, then wide legged ones, and now we’re back to closer fits. That’s one fashion I won’t follow. Wide legged pants suit me so I’m sticking with those.

Mum put all the charity clothes into a box. ‘We normally give clothes to the Diabetes Foundation but they haven’t called us in a long time,’ she said. ‘We’ll put them downstairs so they’re out of the way.’

That night at dinner, the phone rang. Mum picked it up. ‘Hello? Yes…’

Dad muttered, ‘Hang up, don’t talk to telemarketers.’

But mum stayed on the phone and we heard her say, ‘Yes! We have lots of clothes! 7:30 AM on Thursday? No problem. We will leave them outside the door.’

Somehow, the Diabetes Foundation knew we were ready for them.