I love stuff

Flicking through a 20-year-old copy of What to Expect: The

Toddler Years (I am childless; I have truly made procrastination an art) a picture caught my eye. It was a groovy 1990s two-year-old with an overflowing backpack and a shopping bag full of toys. “IT’S ME!” I thought and checked the caption: “Toddlers embrace the satisfaction and security that comes from the accumulation of possessions”.

I felt attacked. Only a few days before, a friend of Bae’s mother had called in with a book she’d just finished, ‘Good timing,’ said I, gesturing to the workmen hammering away in the living room, ‘I’m just getting shelves up’. She winced, ‘Oh. Well that’s why I’m dropping the book. I don’t have shelves — they encourage clutter.’

I’d been stuff-shamed. And not for the first time: everywhere we look we’re told to discard, minimise. Possessions are holding us back. Depressed? Donate all your shoes! Stressed? You only really need four shallow bowls in your kitchen. Headaches? Hemorrhoids? High blood pressure? Create a capsule wardrobe! Organising is the panacea for modern life.

And I get it: when I’m home alone, full of nervous energy, I’ll get the laptop, open an incognito tab and search, ‘Marie Kondo before and after’. The instant wash of euphoric wellbeing is unparalleled — the heaving cupboards transformed into eerily empty Zen gardens — it’s heroin for the soul.

But sometimes I get a pang. The bookcase looks beautiful with a single photograph and monstera plant, but could the books really have been so burdensome?

We’re told to only keep things that ‘spark joy’. But what about adult-toddlers for whom basically everything sparks joy? I have, on one shelf alone: a shattered Pogues snow-globe, a soap dish I purloined from my grandmother’s house, an origami crane, a small plastic dinosaur, a broken but beautiful camera.

I love things. I love looking at them and holding them.

And I refuse to be stuff-shamed any more. Kondo is fine for insta-porn, but leave my books, tea towels and 15 white blouses out of it. I need them.