Laying the table?

Preparations for family arrivals at Rosebank involved a wander round the dining room table before deciding just to use the kitchen table.
Sheila is 94 years old and the picture here was taken for her passport when she left the UK half a century ago to start a new life in Japan. I can't quite recognise her, and I wonder if I would have made any connection with her 43 year old self when I was that age.
The abandoned gathering of objects left on the table looked to me as if they were carefully placed rather than being the result of a major decluttering exercise in this room over the summer. Piles of books for the charity shop , items of tea ceremony equipment, boxes of screws, hinges, buttons and new shoe laces. So many things still to find another place to be - hopefully not discarded into landfill .
This fragment of the photo tells , rather eloquently, part of her story.

The older I get the more overwhelming 'stuff ' becomes. Less is definitely more for me these days .