14 August 2023 , 18:54
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The Friends actress Lisa Kudrow and I have something in common. We hoard.
Not so bad as to need Trinny, Susannah and a reality TV camera crew to slowly shoulder open our front door to force back the mass of junk piled up behind it.
More the type where severing emotional bonds becomes a heartbreaking dilemma over which King Solomon would need a bit more time to think.
With my quartet now deep into their teens, Mrs L’s ruthless approach to decluttering has seen a blitz on everything from games we once bonded over as a family to dispensing with the stylish (I thought!) black sofa on which I’d bottle feed them as she slept through the night.
Also my cassette collection of music – built up over decades – that started with pressing play and record for top 40 radio hits, continued through being able to afford my own, and ended with the advent of CDs.
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They too are obsolete, thanks to Spotify and YouTube – another reason to despise the phones engaged in a tug of war with us parents for our kids’ childhood.
Over the past weekend, I’ve fought for the analogue music and DVDs sat in boxes in the shed for years in readiness – so I thought – for a return to the main house. The jury is still out, but while I understand the need to sell off or donate some things, I marvel at the people who can so easily cut ties with a lifetime.
Then there is paperwork that you could’ve freely dispensed with before the days of identity theft. Now I need them to be shredded, not just bundled into bags to be left out.
To be fair to Mrs L, she agrees. They will take an age to shred but better that than wonder who is scouring through my old bank statements.
Kudrow, who played Phoebe in Friends, articulated her reasoning for hoarding documents far better than me.
Back in 2010 she said: “I used to feel bad about holding on to things from my past like my day planners from the 80s, and faxes and stuff. I’m not going to feel bad about that any more because those are all, at some point, potentially important family documents about what I was thinking or feeling at the time.
“It turns out that everything is a clue when you’re trying to piece together a life from a few hundred years ago.”
You shouldn’t have to feel like the weird cat lady or the reclusive reptile guy to retain your connections to the past.
Phones die, pictures get erased but hard copies last for ever.