Older doesn’t always mean wiser. Jo Whiley has spoken about a home hack she picked up from – clang! – Dame Judi Dench, and I’m afraid I’m opposed to it with every fibre of my being. Whiley is in a new phase – her four children are grownup – so she recently began the most satisfying project of all: a decluttering spree. Hard even to type those words without a shiver of anticipation. Trigger warning for fellow neat freaks, though: this anecdote does not end well.
Whiley went to interview Dench for her RHS Roots podcast and found the actor’s house “packed with family photographs, children’s drawings and memories everywhere”. Mind-blowingly, she means this as a positive. “Seeing Judi’s reminded me that lived-in spaces are often the most beautiful because they reflect a lifetime of love, family and shared experiences,” she says. “I suddenly thought: ‘Why am I putting all these things away?’” As soon as I got home, I immediately put all the family photographs back out.” TLDR: I cleaned up and then I made it all messy again. Shudder.
This sorry tale could be viewed as a recluttering, but instead it’s called reverse decluttering – and it’s a trend. Give me strength. It’s backed up by a review article from Current Opinion in Psychology, which determined that – duh – some objects help to bring significant memories to mind. Another study found that possessions could evoke pride. What, more pride than tidiness? Nothing matters more than that. Decluttering is the heroin of housework – in its addictiveness, that is. In every other way, it’s the opposite of heroin – it will make your life better and you’ll never be sorry you tried it. I live to declutter. It cleanses not only your environment, but also your mind, body and soul. I’m prepared to keep a capsule collection of essential items – everything else is to be chucked out, sometimes while someone is still using it, if they pause for long enough. I’m like a snake, constantly shedding skin and donating it to the charity shop.
Because fate has a sense of humour, I accidentally married a hoarder. The following sounds like hyperbole, but it’s completely true to say the man has never thrown anything away. If at any point since birth he was given or bought it, he still has it. He has every laptop he’s ever owned, even though all but the one he uses no longer work, which is why he begrudgingly replaced them. He has clothes from his schooldays, including a T-shirt that hasn’t fitted him for decades and resembles a cobweb because of the ratio of hole to material. If a member of his family ever touched it – even an individual he never met, even if it is ugly, broken, useless or all three – he intends to take it to his grave.
He has a mustard cravat that also smells like mustard, despite many spins in the washing machine, which belonged to a great-great-aunt’s husband’s brother. You’d be amazed how few occasions call for a cravat, unless you assumed it was none at all. My husband is like a bird refusing to budge from its nest because it’s fiercely protecting eggs, but instead of eggs it’s nonfunctional laptops, antique T-shirts and a pungent cravat.
Clearly, snakes and birds are not natural bedfellows, which is why our relationship is an endless argument about whether his items have been innocently mislaid (by him) or secretly disposed of (by me). If he hears about reverse decluttering, it’s all over for me. To continue the snake metaphor too far, I won’t have a leg to stand on. We recently had a lengthy, passionate debate over a stone; I won only on a technicality (he couldn’t name the beach it was from before the buzzer went). The route out of our house is a one-way street and there’s a no-returns policy. If he even tries to mess with the system, I’ll unhinge my jaw and swallow him whole.
Polly Hudson is a freelance writer
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