I’m not saying that hanging on to things is in my genes, but while visiting my parents’ house last summer, I discovered a sachet of powdered beef casserole mix that went out of date in 1992. It had not only survived for a decade beyond its sell-by date in a cupboard in Leicestershire, it had then moved house to Shropshire, where it degenerated for a further 20 years. It’s almost certainly still there.
I don’t tend to live as if the second world war is still raging, but it’s perhaps inevitable I have grown up as the sort of person who doesn’t throw “things” away. Museum guides, running medals, posters for gigs in a Leeds pub circa 2001 – such items, obtained over 43 years, have always been squirrelled away in a storage box somewhere. Almost none are on display – which, you could argue, makes keeping them all the stranger.
So how, the Guardian asked, would I feel about giving away 50 of my possessions in a new year clear-out? Would it be liberating, leaving my house uncluttered and my soul cleansed? Or would being forcibly parted from the fuzzy Siamese cat doll I’ve had since childhood result in complex psychological trauma?
1 Guardian promo T-shirts Once worn by my five-a-side team
2 Spare lid I am a person who kept an emergency spare lid
3 Hip flask Posh cracker gift, for when you’re out and need 25ml of spirits
4 Joy Division poster Great band. Great sleeve. Not great art for an adult to have
5 Bank statement Will I ever know who stuck £40 in my account in summer 1987? Not now!
My wife was happy with the trauma, so long as we were left with a tidy house. She believes our home is “overloaded with tat” and that my attachment to badges, tins and childhood wristwatches that no longer work is spoiling her dream of living in a white-walled cube with nothing in it but a sofa, a TV and – at a push – our kids. She grew up in a family where sentiment is a stranger, beloved soft toys called Wubby are taken to the skip without notice and anything lacking an immediately obvious use is on the fast track to Binsville.
“Imagine no possessions,” John Lennon once sang, of the moral collapse into rampant materialism rather than, say, me taking up drawer space with a Panini football sticker album from 1987, but it’s a message my wife would approve of, no doubt while suggesting John stick his white piano on eBay when he’s done warbling. These days there is an added moral dimension to the keep/chuck dilemma. Recycling is the environmental choice, so shouldn’t I be praised for holding on to things I might need one day rather than having to rebuy them?
6 Tin With old car on it – renowned as I am for my love of 20s motors
7 Purse I think my first girlfriend gave me this. Could have been my mum
8 Mobile phone Only it no longer works and votes Brexit
9 Joint roller It wasn’t cool to roll joints in a machine aged 18, and it isn’t now
10 Patch Product of a school trip. Unlikely to put it on a jumper now
Well, not really, given I couldn’t remember owning half this stuff. If I needed a pocket torch, I’d go out and get one, not check that box in the cellar. So maybe I was the problem, holding on to stuff other people might need during this cost-of-living crisis? This seemed equally daft. Surely nobody wanted a 20-year-old guide to the Kunstmuseum Bern. It was hard to imagine sales of crumpled Joy Division posters going through the roof because people like me were refusing to part with theirs.
Still, it’s a good time for me to try to declutter. A few months back, my parents asked me to sort through some old boxes that had been stored for years at their house. Going through these ancient belongings was a strange, emotional and sometimes difficult experience. Memories I had no idea were lurking within me were activated, setting off chain reactions of recollections.
11 Old schoolwork Fascinating for about 45 seconds (but only to me)
12 Pants My old, unloved boxers are in the Guardian. How has it come to this?
13 Medical card Got this for letting doctors put experimental acne cream on me
14 Incense tray It’s like owning a real Miró. Only it’s not, is it?
15 Keyring This seal was mine for years – but is it so good I had to keep it?
Some things I remembered with Proustian force: a knobbly headed purple alien monster I adored as a kid. Others were more prosaic: a hospital appointment card sent me straight back to being a broke student signing up for medical trials to earn extra cash; a bank statement detailed clothes bought from Burton, and I felt sorry for the clueless sixth-former trying to work out who he was.
Do we ever spend enough time looking back on our lives? In lieu of keeping a diary – a big regret of mine – this felt like the next best thing. As you reacquaint yourself with these objects, you meet all your past selves again, including the ones that were having a difficult time of it. The full rush of life, all at once.
16 Festival receipts book Shows crepe prices, not who headlined
17 Letter opener For when you need to open a letter by blade
18 Trainers Only chucking these so I can make public my 19m 49s parkrun
19 Cuban car Still not convinced this won’t find a way of getting back to me
20 Jumper Doesn’t fit, because I’ve got fatter
It became strikingly apparent that the reason I was reluctant to chuck any of this away was fear of death. But after flicking through an entire football magazine I had created when I was 10 (including a feature called “Gazza: the real me!” and a deep dive into Sondico shin pads), I set to work trying to let go of this terror. Several hours of painfully parting with things later, there was an impressively large pile of stuff to chuck. I threw a small wooden car from Cuba on the top, dusted my hands together theatrically, and went to bed.
If I could manage that, surely I could find 50 items from my own home to chuck? I started by setting some rules. First, anything musical had to stay, from the Stylophone that once had a neighbour banging on the walls after I spent an hour practising Alanis Morissette’s Hand in My Pocket on it, to the child’s accordion with a Chinese toddler’s smiling face on the box. You never know when I might need to sample one of these things, I reasoned, despite having never sampled, or even needed to sample, anything before in my life.
21 Cannabis mat See rolling machine above, only slightly less sad (arguable)
22 Woolly hat Giving ‘grubbiest person on The Kop’ vibes
23 Cricket gloves For a 12-year-old, chucked just as my kids near 12
24 Notepad Yes, the swastika’s an ancient eastern religious symbol, but …
25 Antibiotic cream Kept in case a long-forgotten infection recurs
My second rule: anything that was clearly junk could not count towards my 50 objects. Old Smarties tubes, broken pens, dead batteries were all off the list.
The first few items came easily enough. I wouldn’t lose sleep over several months’ worth of year 10 writing exercises, nor wake bolt upright screaming, “Oh God, where is that discontinued iPod Nano that I no longer have a charger for? Please say I didn’t throw it away.”
But as I neared 20 items, the task became a struggle. I realised, for the first time in my life, that I am actually a creative genius, able to conjure up ever more fantastical reasons for why it would be foolish to discard, say, an antique tea urn (might be worth something one day), or an old Cub scout uniform (earned too many badges), or an autobiography written when I was eight (might be needed for press purposes if I ever become famous).
26 Scarf Nothing wrong with this – except seventh in scarf pecking order
27 Chequebook Why did I cling on to this? I couldn’t tell you
28 DJ mag Looks like I’ll never get round to that 2004 Meat Katie interview
29 Kinesiology tape Don’t believe it does anything really
30 Jamie Oliver cookbook Refuse to believe he can cook, yet have a library of his content!
In our kitchen cupboard I have 29 matching spice containers, refashioned from a long discontinued range of antipasto mushroom jars. There had been 30 jars but one got smashed – and I kept its lid in case I lost the lid to one of the other jars. This spare lid wasn’t “junk” but future-proofing of my spice jar collection. I recounted that anecdote to demonstrate just how far I had gone and why this hoarding mania had to stop. I walked to the cupboard. I picked up the spare lid. I dangled it over the bag of chucked items and, with almost superhuman strength, forced myself to drop it.
Slowly, various items joined the lid: a lung-scarring plastic bong; one of several Jamie Oliver books that I’ve acquired without ever knowingly buying one; an old Nokia phone with a Union Jack painted on the front (to imitate Noel Gallagher’s famous Britpop guitar but, in the cold light of 2023, more the sort of thing a Britain First member might play Snake on).
31 NME festival guide Including the unhinged advice: ‘Wash magic mushrooms’
32 Spare deodorant Kept for if my main one ran out. Smelt horrible
33 Cassette tape Hopefully this is Be Here Now and not something more interesting
34 Tin When the photographer said this was nice, I almost kept it
35 Plastic bong Probably too old to get back into toxic huffing now
Obviously, every magazine I had something published in had to stay, as did various Liverpool FC merchandise, but I did reluctantly bin my Chester City v Stoke City programme from 1992, along with an early-00s NME Student Guide which, even wearing nostalgia’s strong lenses, I couldn’t pretend was anything other than a steaming bag of old toot. I got so into the swing of things that I even broke my music rule and threw away my erhu, a Chinese two-stringed instrument my brother had carted around Asia years ago as a gift for me but which I’d never unboxed. Finally, triumphantly, I cast my 50th item, a little wooden car from Cuba, on to the pile, dusted my hands together theatrically, and went to bed.
Hang on, I hear you cry, the Cuban car? But hadn’t you already thrown that one out at your parents’ house? Well. A few weeks later, they came to visit with a gift for my four-year-old son. Wrapped up and disguised as a new present was the Cuban car, fished out of the pile to be thrown away. File that one under: why I am like this.
36 Fuzzy cat A very important childhood object – until I try to think why
37 Pocket pen Kept in a valuables box that convinced me it must be
38 USB stick One of 117 – this one incredibly sticky (not sure why)
39 Hash pipe Too late now to open a museum of terrible weed paraphernalia?
40 Cup In case I ever wanted an espresso and to pretend I was in Nando’s?
In fact, to find out why I really am like this, I spoke to an expert. Dr Stuart Whomsley, a clinical psychologist, gets to the heart of my struggle when he tells me, “Objects can trigger memories, so getting rid of objects can feel like forgetting something for ever. Without an object as a prompt, you may never remember things again. Other objects hold potential for the future that we would like to have – we buy and keep crafting materials we will use to make fabulous gifts one day. Or we keep clothes that might one day fit again. Throwing them out is like giving up on the future person we want to be.”
Whomsley says the key to a successful clear-out is to change the way you think about your actions. “For things not going in the bin, imagine you are giving them a new life where they will have a new journey with someone else.” Admittedly, this is harder to do when it comes to a pair of old pants. But it could work for the erhu or even little things like a pack of running tape.
“Holding the object and discussing your relationship with it before saying goodbye can help,” Whomsley adds. “Taking a photograph can keep the memory alive.” Or, to take it to an extreme, have your knackered trainers professionally photographed for a national newspaper.
41 Jumper A Shit London Guinness number mistakenly shrunk in the wash
42 iPod Nano Owners of those ungainly chargers might want this?
43 Notebook From a mid-00s Iceland Airwaves festival. Worth a packet
44 Indigestion pills A brand that didn’t work that well for me
45 Lip balm Artisanal seaweed variety hung on to for seven years
After finalising my list, I threw my 50 items into boxes. Worryingly, they fitted inside just two of the six I’d bought for the task. It didn’t look very impressive and neither I nor my wife felt the sense of blissful unburdenment I was promised. Maybe that’s because I was now aware of exactly how much crap I was still clinging on to.
I worried that I had cheated. If I had chucked out all of my cassettes, fair enough, but I was throwing away just one tape … of an album that was recorded from a CD I own … that I don’t even like. Hardly Marie Kondo, was it?
It was only when I arrived at the photoshoot, though, that the shame really hit me. Here, in front of strangers, my “precious” items suddenly looked preposterous. Most didn’t have meaningful stories attached, other than that they’d been with me since childhood. There was no elaborate tale to weave around a tin with a 1929 Lincoln car on it. Yes, I ran my first sub-20-minute 5km in the trainers, but so what? I’m never going to frame them, am I? My grandchildren are unlikely to be arsed.
46 Pomade ‘To chuck: hair pomade, half used.’ Hardly Hemingway, is it?
47 Torn-out ad The model looks like a boy from primary school – saved for 33 years!
48 Wine notes The wine has long been drunk. Somehow these notes survive
49 Football programme A friend moved to Chester. We went. Can’t remember the score
50 A Chinese erhu I’m, um, probably going to keep (I tried, OK?)
And as for the things that were “useful”: my fifth favourite woolly hat (I don’t wear hats), a tacky incense tray with a Joan Miró design (I don’t burn incense), boxer shorts I’ve never liked, seaweed lip balm that must have been in my rucksack for years? After a few hours spent posing alongside this trash, I started to see it all as my wife must see it: utter garbage that should have been turfed out decades ago. I felt deeply embarrassed.
Which was perhaps the shock therapy I needed for a mindset change. I left the photoshoot chastened, and determined to crack on with a proper declutter. I’d start with the Panini sticker book, although to be fair that took an age to complete and it is fun to look at old players’ knobbly faces. So instead I’d start with the knobbly headed purple alien monster that doesn’t technically have a use … although it would make a kind of cool office desk mascot. And how about that Chinese erhu? Oh, that’s in the bag of things to go but, looking at it now, maybe it shouldn’t be? I might need it one day, you never know, perhaps to sample it or something?
