Declutter Your Life!

Oh, I know it’s been quiet, but I’ve been busy — sleep­ing, mostly. I’m on leave from work this week — such a rare occur­rence that I’m sur­prised it’s not made the news­pa­per front pages — and since I can’t afford a hol­i­day, plus the weather is too grey and miser­able to really encour­age me into going out­side, I had already decided that this week was going to be all about under­tak­ing some ser­i­ous decluttering.

Although I had a ded­ic­ated bout of throw­ing out stuff when I moved into this flat just over two years ago, some­how all the detritus of life seems to be pil­ing up around me again. In the words of Loyd Gross­man, “let’s look at the evidence”.

Well, for starters, there’s an old com­puter mon­itor. Ori­gin­ally man­u­fac­tured in the off-white beige col­our so beloved of PC man­u­fac­tur­ers, over the years it seems to have turned a faint shade of jaun­dice yel­low, although even that is dif­fi­cult to make out now that it’s covered by a thick layer of pro­tect­ive dust. I’ve been mean­ing to get rid of it for months, but recently I’ve found myself rather reas­sured by the fact that whenever I visit other people in their homes, they also seem to have mon­it­ors that aren’t being used any­more. Maybe, in the 21st cen­tury, the redund­ant com­puter mon­itor lurk­ing in an under­stairs cup­board has become a new fact of mod­ern life.

Then there’s the old ONdi­gital box — remem­ber them? It’s a first or second gen­er­a­tion example, and there­fore never worked very well in the first place. It now has the faintly musty air of a genu­ine antique, so if any­one does col­lect such things you’re wel­come to have it.

What else? Well, there are many smal­ler items that need to be dis­posed of. For instance, a small col­lec­tion of seven mouse mats, each advert­ising vari­ous dubi­ous com­pan­ies, which I’ve some­how man­aged to picked up as free­bies along the way. I only have one mouse attached to one com­puter, so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever need seven mouse mats — unless, of course, I’m sud­denly coaxed into mak­ing grand, sweep­ing ges­tures with my arm when using my mouse, in which case seven mats might come in use­ful. I could stick them together with Sel­lo­tape. Or maybe not.

I prob­ably have more crock­ery than I’m ever likely to need. I live on my own, after all, although I also retain the for­lorn hope that one day someone might want to come round for a meal — which would, admit­tedly, require them to taste my cook­ing (unless I cheat and opt for the Marks & Spen­cer option) — so maybe I could allow myself to keep more than one plate, one cup and one bowl. Plus, although it hasn’t reared its ugly head in recent months, there’s always my unfor­tu­nate plate-smashing habit to bear in mind. It’s best to have some spare crock­ery around, in read­i­ness for any sud­den mood swings.

I also have two egg whisks. Why?

So I know what needs to be done, and I know that I will prob­ably be pleas­antly sur­prised at the amount of junk I can get rid of. I know that it’s time to wake up, stretch, yawn unreas­on­ably loudly, stand in front of the mir­ror, look myself square in the eyes, take a deep breath, smile pos­it­ively and say, “Today I am going to Declut­ter My Life!”

That’s the the­ory, any­way. The real­ity, how­ever, is that I’m on leave for the first time in months, I’m tired, and at the moment I simply can’t be bothered.

Undoubtedly, part of the prob­lem is that every time the phrase ‘declut­ter my life’ pops into my head, I can’t help think­ing of one of those week­day even­ing pro­grammes on Chan­nel 4 or BBC2. You know the sort I’m refer­ring to — those lifestyle/life improve­ment series presen­ted by some bossy woman with a ridicu­lous name, who appar­ently has years of know­ledge in the field thanks to some dubi­ous job title that you’re pretty sure didn’t even exist ten years ago. (Life Coach, any­one?) In fact, now I think about it, there was a series all about declut­ter­ing: it was called The Life Laun­dry. Presen­ted by perma-grinning ‘home con­sult­ant’ Dawna Wal­ter (see what I mean?), it sold itself with the prom­ise that: “it’s only by let­ting go of the stuff they have hoarded and con­front­ing the emo­tional attach­ments these items rep­res­ent that the con­trib­ut­ors can have the clutter-free homes they des­per­ately crave”.

Gosh. It’s only an old ONdi­gital box. I’m not emo­tion­ally attached to it. It’s just that I really don’t rel­ish the task of empty­ing all my cup­boards and get­ting rid of it — and a hun­dred other things — at the moment. Any­way, when did we turn spring clean­ing and ‘hav­ing a bit of a tidy up’ into a course of therapy?

Of course, the irony is that if Dawna and her cam­era crew were here now, I would undoubtedly be rather more com­mit­ted to the task of declut­ter­ing. Pic­ture me, if you will, weep­ing quietly as I try to decide which egg whisk is more import­ant to me, or agon­ising over whether I can pos­sibly be par­ted from my small col­lec­tion of mouse mats.

Has any­one got Dawna’s number?