Can you do me a little favour please?
Skip into the kitchen and open up the drawer that you keep your random stuff in. Because I know you have one. Probably more than one, because everyone does. If you can do this now, and let me know when you are back, I’ll be here waiting for you.
Everyone back? Good stuff. What did you find?
And more importantly, reflect and contemplate this question. Why on earth do you keep these random items, stored away in a drawer? Will you ever actually use them?
Let me be clear, I am not the hoarder in this house. I ask the aforementioned question, daily in our household. Let me bring our drawer(s) to life for you.
Batteries – packet gone. Most probably don’t work, but I am sure my wife told me they can only be disposed of via a man with a white boiler suit arriving in some form of anti-radiation recycling van.
Instruction manuals. We have an instruction manual relating to a cooker we had when living in a different house 16 years ago. Why is it still here? Just in case we purchase the house again?
Keys. Random keys, no label, nothing. But obviously they cannot be disposed of because they may open something really, really important.
Wires and cables. Thousands of them. I’m sure I saw a cable relating to a Commodore 64 computer from the 80’s.
Chinese chop sticks, just in case we, as a family, choose to eat our Chinese takeaway with chop sticks. It’s never going to happen. Lord give me strength.
Takeaway menus. Sorry, I can’t even comment on this one. Ok, I will. How many Domino pizza menus does a household need? WHEN WE LOOK ONLINE EVERY, SINGLE, TIME!
Tea light candles, and lots of them. We could easily covert our home into a chapel on a Sunday.
But these random acts of hoarding (because that is what it is) are not just confined to the kitchen drawers. In our loft space, you will find the full, unabridged history of our kids nursery/primary/secondary education. Yip, every single school book. Every single ‘5 times table’. Every single sketched picture of a bus. It’s all there because apparently ‘it will be lovely to look back on in later life’.
Now, in our loft space, there is a box (sorry, a huge box) of my personal football trophies and medals, gained throughout my career. That is not hoarding, that is history. I earned every player of the year, now that is different.
I will leave you with the best example of hoarding I have ever seen. It was courtesy of my dear old Aunt. When I was looking for something (probably a battery or a takeaway menu) from her kitchen drawer, I found an old photo. I enquired as to who was in the picture. “I have no idea who they are, but they do look so happy and it feels wrong to throw it away”, replied my aunt.
It came in a frame she bought from a charity shop.
Now the nights are drawing in, I dare you to have a clear out! Until next time.
Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/cable-chaos-snapshot_666260_867998″>Stockcake</a>
