The real reason you can’t throw away all that JUNK

...it has a secret emotional life of its own, says the author of a lyrical new book

ALMOST every single one of us has sentimental attachments to useless objects that live neglected at the bottom of our cupboards. We own ancient cardboard boxes which have been in our attic for years and whose contents we could not even name. We have storage containers, garages, trunks full of unnecessary things. Does that make us all hoarders? We like to think not.

Hoarders are those miserable, shamed people we see on television, having their piles of belongings examined by brisk experts.

They are filthy, dirty and need to be reformed — while however much we own, and however long it is since we last moved the sofa to vacuum underneath it, are somehow on the right side of the line.

But are we really in control of the quantities of stuff that we own? Would we even survive without our things? While we may not all be in danger of hoarding, almost everyone has irrational possessions — a cupboard full of functionless keys, small bits of plastic and broken tools, or simply too much stuff.

In countries like Ireland, where consumerism prevails, our possessions form an inescapable part not only of our outer lives but our inner landscape. As a design writer and lecturer, I’m fascinated by the things people choose to keep, and what that says about their hearts and minds.

Many store collections of valued objects, stamps or snuffboxes; far more treasure family photos and childhood mementoes. Beyond that, there’s something strange in the way we hide things in cupboards and never use them, renting increasing amounts of storage for the stuff we can’t fit into our houses.

We believe that objects can contain the essence of human personalities or encapsulate an experience — our grandmother’s jewellery, perhaps, or sports equipment left to gather dust.

From earliest childhood, we live so intertwined with our possessions that they end up incorporated into our being. Consider the way children pick out one of their cuddly toys to be special, a comforter and constant companion: what psychiatrists call a transitional object.

THESE soft toys, psychologists say, are imbued by our young minds with the life and protective powers of our parents. When our care-givers leave us in a dark room on our own, these comforting beings allow us to keep the safety of the grown-ups close by, so long as we hold on.

Mine was a panda, who sits in my study to this day. So, why do I keep my childhood friend so close? And why are there so many things in my house with no clear use or purpose?

I believe that many of us, deep down, think objects can soak up the attributes of people or events we associate with them — and become alive with a spirit entirely their own.

We would like to believe that only ancient peoples, remote tribes and hoarders think like this. But that’s not the case.

Whole auctions are built around the idea that some kind of ectoplasm leaches from a famous person into their possessions. Marilyn Monroe’s dress is worth more than any ordinary piece of clothing; the same is true of John Lennon’s piano. The more charismatic the person, the greater the value, as though their energy has entered the object like a static charge.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a foible of silly people with too much money, but the basic belief that a person’s spirit can live on in the things that they own is one we all hold. Scientists have done experiments to prove this, but I demonstrated it quite easily at home, in a short conversation with my husband.

Me: So, imagine you’ve got a mug.

Him: Yes, fine.

Me: But it’s Fred West’s mug. Can you use it?

Him (horrified): Of course not. I’d have to throw it away.

He then spent the next few minutes debating whether it might be too contaminating even to put in our kitchen bin and so whether he would have to smash it, in order to prevent anyone else using it without knowing its toxic history, then dispose of the pieces beyond the boundaries of our house, and whether putting it in a public bin would be unfair on the person emptying it.

Almost everyone would feel the same. The mug is, of course, without personality or morals. Yet it’s almost impossible to escape the sense that a transfer of energy has happened, making the mug so dangerous that it cannot remain on Earth unguarded.

It has become an object as powerful as a Neolithic jade axe used in sacred rites. Anything which has been this sacred or profane cannot simply be disposed of; it has to be ritually destroyed.

OBJECTS with positive associations have power, too. Retirement gifts are the most common examples in everyday life, preventing a lifetime of toil from evaporating the moment someone stops work.

Medals perform the same mysterious alchemy, transforming acts of bravery into solid discs of bronze or silver gilt.

But most of our treasured keepsakes are more intensely personal. Clearing my mother’s house after her death, I found a silver napkin ring with an engraved dedication at the back of a cupboard. It belonged to a baby who died — Alastair, the uncle I never knew. His napkin ring held the sadness of his death long after everyone who remembered this small boy had gone.

These frontiers between us and our stuff, between the living and the dead, animate and inanimate, become porous in the unreal and disconnected time after someone dies. When my mother died a few years ago, I had to believe that a part of her spirit really remained in her table and chairs, in the very fabric of her house. This was how I might still find her. Death turned my mother into a cold body, but it brought her possessions to life.

This sorting and processing of stuff has become part of the modern ritual of grief and mourning. Under the skin of rationality, it’s common to feel that the dead persist, or that our own treasured possessions hold some vital key to our identity.

Sometimes thinking like this is necessary in order to survive. We are all in the same boat, and this vessel is loaded to the brim with all the stuff that surrounds us.

ADAPTED from The Life of Stuff by Susannah Walker, published by Doubleday at €20.99.

IS THERE a particular object that means something special to you? Let us know at features@dailymail.ie