For months now I have been ignoring the growing mess in my spare room. It started out with a few things neatly stacked into one corner, yet over time began to resemble a fly-tipping site containing everything from broken appliances and bedding to camping gear and miscellaneous clothing.
And items would have continued to be shoehorned in with reckless abandon if matters hadn’t come to a head last week. I knew I had a pair of unworn slippers at the back of the wardrobe (welcome to my rock and roll life). But to reach them, I had to navigate my way past the gargantuan mountains of stuff.
I limbered up at the door like a Ninja Warrior contestant contemplating an assault course, before hesitating briefly. Maybe it would be easier to buy another pair of slippers? But then I told myself, “Don’t be daft, they are right over there …”
It was only a small matter of carefully crawling and climbing and gently moving things about with the skill of a Jenga grandmaster.
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As you can probably guess, it didn’t pan out that way. There was a thud. Then came the avalanche. A sudden swirl of colours like the inside of a kaleidoscope as everything went flying in myriad directions.
When the dust settled, I found myself sitting on the floor, gingerly hugging an old, threadbare draft excluder, with a pile of Christmas cards in my lap and one foot inside an upturned box of tent pegs.
I surveyed the room, taking in the chaos. Beat a hasty retreat or deal with it? I set to work, making piles of what to keep, toss or repurpose.
If anyone else was writing this column, right around now they would be sagely telling you how they dispatched everything off to the dump and charity shop in quick succession, the remaining items neatly packed into sleek storage boxes.
I used to be that person. However, it would appear that I have morphed into someone else entirely. Indeed, it transpires that we are officially circling hoarding territory.
My question is this: is amassing clutter simply a byproduct of middle age in that, by a certain point in life, we have inevitably accumulated oodles of belongings?
Or is it an inescapable quirk of human behaviour where, as we get older, we increasingly hold onto things for mawkishly sentimental or self-deluding practical reasons?
I used to laugh at my parents for washing out old Nescafe jars to store random screws and nails that they vowed “might come in handy eventually”. Yet, here I am today, the proud owner of several containers crammed full of everything from washers and spare buttons to the caps off bike tyres.
I am a serial offender for keeping old packaging. I asked myself the other day why I still possess the empty boxes that my last three iPhones came in.
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There is, of course, no justification, but even so I found myself daydreaming about upcycling them into neat little dividers for drawers - or maybe making a tiny bed for someone’s pet mouse (guess who watched too many Tom and Jerry cartoons as a kid).
It got me thinking about the kind of things we keep and how we frame what is acceptable. The anthropology of life’s flotsam and jetsam is curious to unpick. Why is owning a library with hundreds of books not considered hoarding, while having a pile of old Jiffy envelopes potentially is?
Perhaps, though, it isn’t merely about keeping things for the sake of it. It is a bridge between all the different chapters in our life. A comfort blanket. A safety net. A way of fondly reminiscing or equally reassuring ourselves that “one day” does exist when the future feels uncertain.
Still, that’s no excuse for holding on to gubbins we no longer truly need. Which is why this weekend is D-Day for the pointless clutter I have amassed. Pass the bin bags.
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