SUSAN CALMAN

Making a fresh start is easier said than done for our columnist

At precisely one minute past midnight on 1 January, I leave my house, stand outside the front door with some firelighters (instead of coal) and my black cat Daisy Faye Harper (a substitute for a tall dark man), ring the doorbell and wait to be let in. First-footing, even if it is a bit unconventional, is a must in my home. Of course, there’s always a fear I’ll be forced to break back into my own house prior to hypothermia setting in because everyone has forgotten I’ve left, but it’s fun.

That’s not my only New Year tradition, because in the run up to Hogmanay, I always undertake one other task. I try to reorder my entire life by decluttering everything, ridding my house of unnecessary material possessions and streamlining my psyche. The theory is sound. If I live with only what I actually need, then I will be unconstrained by a hodgepodge of unused items, leaving me to power forward as a lean, mean comedy machine.

And, in truth, it always starts pretty well as I attack my wardrobe with gusto. Chanting ‘New year, new me’, anything I haven’t worn during the past 12 months goes into a black bag destined for my local charity shop. And I’m ruthless in my approach. Bags upon bags of jeans are loaded into the car and delivered to charity shops, resulting in a January avalanche of tiny tailored trousers fresh from the Calman Collection in Cats Protection shops all over the city.

Truthfully, though, getting rid of garments is easy because clothes don’t really mean that much to me. They’re necessary to prevent my arrest, of course – sadly, supermarket shopping in the nude is very much frowned upon. But generally they’re not something I feel emotional about. I speed through this part of my task only to have the momentum ruined by the one room in my house that always, even when it’s tidy, looks like it’s been burgled. My study.

Aside from the piles of books and boxes, the wooden elephant in that room is my desk. A sturdy old thing that, throughout the years, has become a receptacle for everything and anything that I just can’t stand parting with. Every year, I try to declutter the drawers of my desk but end up simply stuffing everything back in again. Let me try to explain the problem by divulging some of the contents of my drawers (not something I ever thought I’d write in Good Housekeeping). 1 Phone charger for a Nokia phone I owned in 2005 2 A Palmpilot 3 A Dictaphone with a tape that, when played, contains a recording of me singing Man! I Feel Like A Woman. I have no recollection of this incident 4 Around one million elastic bands that have completely lost their elasticity 5 A collection of around two million pens stolen from hotels All of these things are absolutely necessary and cannot be thrown out no matter how useless they appear to be. The greatest treasure, though, is the Filofax. I had it throughout my university years and it sits, 25 years later, like an archaeological relic at the bottom of the drawer. Every year, I open it reverentially, and while the diary section isn’t exciting (I didn’t have a hugely active social life in the early 1990s), the back of it is thrilling. Scribbled phone numbers, mostly landlines, of people I’d met somewhere. I never seemed to write surnames for some reason, which leads to hours of pondering the identity of Sarah, Mariaka or Ian. And instead of throwing things away, I end up hurtling down the rabbit hole of my life, remembering the past and the people and places I’ve known.

You see, New Year isn’t just about decluttering and looking forward. It’s about remembering the things that have gone before and reminiscing about how I got to where I am now. And so I stuff everything back into the desk drawer, waiting for next New Year so I can take another glorious trip down memory lane. The truth is, I look forward to failing in my streamlining mission because those memories, like hugging a cat on a cold doorstep, are what my New Year is all about.

I end up hurtling down the rabbit hole of my life