I have been reading Good Housekeeping magazine, which is always dangerous because it leaves me with the impression that somewhere in Scotland there is a woman whose pantry contains matching jars, whose towels are all the same colour and whose junk drawer is full of things she can identify. This month the magazine included a list of things we should throw away before Halloween, presumably so that when Christmas arrives we can greet it with empty cupboards, coordinated hangers and absolutely nothing useful when the boiler develops a leak at half past ten on Boxing Day.
I realise there is a generational difficulty here. Younger people have been taught that possessions should either be beautiful, useful right now, or removed from the premises. We were brought up by people who had lived through rationing and regarded throwing away a length of string as a character defect. Nothing was useless. It was merely waiting for its moment.
Apparently the first thing I should remove in October is old Halloween decoration. This is madness. A plastic skeleton missing one leg is not rubbish. He can guard the vegetable patch. A witch with no broom can be placed in the passenger seat of the car when you would prefer people not to think you are driving alone at night.
Next come old coats, boots and seasonal clothes. I have a coat I would not now wear voluntarily in daylight, but it has a vital second career as the thing I throw on when the wheelie bin escapes at two in the morning and starts making for Inverness. Old boots are even more valuable. They can become garden shoes, emergency shoes kept in the car, or the pair you lend to somebody who announces that they have brought only trainers to the Highlands in November. Effie has footwear arranged not by fashion but by degree of probable ruin. This seems considerably more sensible.
Then there are mismatched food containers. Professional organisers regard a box without a lid as a failed object. Women of my generation understand that it has simply changed departments. A lidless plastic tub is for paintbrushes, loose screws, bulbs, seed packets, clothes pegs, batteries, buttons, nails, dog biscuits, freezer labels or the mysterious collection of small metal objects your husband insists belong to something important. A lid without a container is a saucer for a plant pot, a palette for paint, a temporary cover for a bowl or something to put under a dripping jar of honey. Agnes has never thrown away a plastic lid in her life and consequently can protect any horizontal surface in the Highlands at ten minutes’ notice.
Old towels are perhaps the most outrageous item on the list. There is no such thing as an old towel. There is only a towel at a different stage of promotion. First it is a bathroom towel. Then it becomes a hair-dye towel. Then a pet towel. Then a towel kept by the back door for wet feet. Then a car towel. Then a gardening towel. Eventually it is cut into pieces and becomes cleaning cloths, at which point it may continue serving the household for another twelve years. Margaret has towels so old they may remember decimalisation, but if a washing machine floods she can absorb the North Sea.
Old sheets have equally distinguished futures. They become dust sheets, picnic rugs, furniture covers, curtains for a car window, emergency tablecloths, or protective wrapping when somebody says they are moving house and then discovers that furniture has corners. My mother could transform a worn sheet into six entirely different household objects before breakfast. Modern society has somehow decided the correct response is to buy specialist versions of all six.
Wire hangers are also condemned. I accept that they are ugly, but this overlooks their extraordinary engineering potential. A wire hanger can unblock a drain, retrieve something from beneath a wardrobe, hold a plant upright, create a hook, roast a marshmallow in circumstances where standards have already collapsed, repair a broken aerial, support papier-mâché or become a temporary handle for almost anything. Jean has a collection from dry cleaners long vanished and regards them as raw material. I would rather be trapped on an island with Jean and twelve wire hangers than with a professional organiser.
Christmas decorations are supposed to be inspected and broken ones thrown away. I cannot agree. A string of lights with half the bulbs working is merely suitable for half a window. A bauble with a missing hook can be tied up with thread. A cracked ornament is placed with the cracked side facing the tree. Tinsel has no recognised end of life. It simply becomes shorter. Eventually you are decorating the smallest branch with three inches of silver material that entered the family sometime during the Callaghan government. That is tradition.
Expired pantry goods are apparently next. Here I will concede that some judgement is necessary, but young people are alarmingly literal about dates. There is a difference between a yoghurt three months beyond salvation and a tin of cinnamon that has merely lost some of its enthusiasm. Nutmeg does not turn into plutonium at midnight. Mustard powder can survive governments. Baking soda has uses far beyond baking, and vinegar has never met a domestic problem it was not prepared to attempt. Morag considers best-before dates to be notes from anxious mainlanders and has survived magnificently.
Old papers and flyers are another target. Here, too, the professionals have misunderstood the ecosystem. Junk mail protects the kitchen table during glueing. Envelopes become shopping lists. The backs of letters become telephone notes. Cardboard goes under furniture legs. Old newspapers clean glass better than half the products sold for the purpose. School artwork is different. You do not throw away a drawing of yourself made by a six-year-old simply because you appear to have no torso. You keep it until the child is forty and can be embarrassed by it properly.
Games and puzzles are also under suspicion. Missing pieces, we are told, make them unsuitable for donation. This is defeatist. A jigsaw with one piece missing becomes a family mystery. A Monopoly set without enough hotels teaches children about housing shortages. Scrabble without the letter E becomes advanced education. Old playing cards make bookmarks, and emergency shims for uneven furniture. Rhona once used two queens and a seven to level a bookcase and insists it has stood perfectly ever since.
And then, inevitably, they come for the junk drawer. The junk drawer is civilisation’s final defence against the consequences of throwing useful things away. It contains the Allen key that fits nothing you currently own but will fit something purchased in 2031. It contains spare buttons from coats that died years ago, a candle shaped like the number four, a curtain hook, three foreign coins, two fuses, a cork, a tiny screwdriver, a tape measure, a thimble, six rubber bands and a key that nobody dares discard because it might open something expensive.
Professional organisers say that if you have no idea what an object belongs to, it should go.
That is precisely when you must keep it.
If you know what it belongs to, you can make an informed decision. If you do not, you are holding a potential component of the central-heating system.
I am beginning to think the real difference between generations is not clutter but imagination. We did not look at an object and ask whether it currently served its original purpose. We asked what else it might do. A jam jar stopped being packaging and became hardware storage. A biscuit tin became an archive. An old toothbrush entered domestic service with responsibilities ranging from cleaning taps to applying shoe polish. Margarine tubs experienced more reincarnations than a Buddhist monk.
There does, however, come a point when decluttering becomes sensible, and I have recently discovered the correct method.
You do not ask whether an object might someday be useful.
Of course it might.
You ask whether you personally still have enough time left to get around to using it.
This is quite different. I’m not decluttering the house. I’m editing my remaining ambitions.
I recently looked at my roller skates and realised that the question was no longer whether they might come in handy. The question was whether there was any realistic sequence of future events in which I would strap wheels to my feet voluntarily. There was a time when I might have kept them because one never knows. I now know.
The trampoline was harder because trampolines represent optimism. Nobody buys one expecting to stand beside it drinking tea. You buy it because some part of you believes there will be afternoons filled with energetic bouncing. Eventually, however, you reach an age when the phrase “energetic bouncing” sounds less like recreation and more like a medical incident.
This is the decluttering method nobody tells you about.
Do not throw away the spare towel. You will use it.
Keep the plastic tubs. They have careers ahead of them.
Retain the wire hangers, the old sheets and certainly the junk drawer.
But if something requires a future version of yourself who is noticeably younger, more athletic or considerably more optimistic, you may safely let it go.
I am keeping the pirate sword.
The roller skates can go.
