WILL HOOSE CLEAR-UP DECLUTTER MY HEID?

The prospect of a visitor - albeit a tradesman - spurs Rab to do something about his kitchen ‘man-cave’, but tackling the lounge may prove a mission impossible

C ome with me to space, dear readers. No, not that space. Not ooter space. I mean the newly-created space on my kitchen floor. It’s the final frontier for bold adventurers!

It’s a newly-cleared area, and tidying it made me think about all this “decluttering” malarkey. Is that still a thing? Generally, I catch up with fads as they’re fading. To explain: the kitchen floor is the size of a football pitch. Not much use to me. It’s not as if I entertain huge parties of folk. Indeed, the number of people who’ve sat at my dinner table comes to, let me see, oh yes: none.

But the floor space comes in handy for projects, and so was home to several pots of paint lying on blue protective sheets; a chair for painting; a barbell; some planks of wood; and an electric saw. Delivery folks opening my kitchen door to leave parcels have doubtless formed the impression that my whole house is one big man-cave.

But it’s ma hoose, and I’ll do what I want with it. That is to say, I will make it one big, unholy mess. The kitchen table itself is piled high with unopened bank statements, newspapers, five buttons off something (can’t remember what), the constituent parts of a broken electric plug, a plastic skipping rope for hypothetical exercise, three paperbacks, and an embarrassing number of bottles for recycling.

I decided to clear the lot, but only because I was going to have a visitor. A tradesman, to boot. One day, the cooker just stopped working. I tried fixing it myself which, in a surprise development, resulted in a big bang at the socket. Neighbours reported seeing a mushroom cloud over the house. So I’ll need to get an electrician in.

The plan was to clean the cooker and surrounding area but I decided to spruce up the entire kitchen. And – d’you know what? – it looked far better afterwards. It really did: spacious, airy, tidy. I think the idea of decluttering is that the same feelings will then transfer to your heid. However, the chances of decluttering my onion are remote.

Still, if I couldn’t do my cranium, at least I could do the rest of the house. Some day. Not yet.

I’m sitting in the lounge, or lounging in the sitting room, as I write and, yep, it’s a mess. It has another big floor, which is currently home to two guitar amplifiers, a multi-effects pedal, two big piles of old photographs that I’ve been meaning to sort, and a throw that’s supposed to cover up the shabby sofa but which always finds its way to the floor, where I just leave it, as it seems happy there.

Even the sofa, upon which few have sat, has four electric guitars on it. I tried putting all this guitar gubbins in the back room, but kept bringing it through to play in the sitting room (warmer). The guitars are a waste of space: I still can’t work out which end of the instrument you’re supposed to blow into.

So, I’ll make a start on all this mess next week or the week after, weather permitting and if I can find a window in my busy schedule, what with a hammock to lie in and everything.

BRIGHT IDEA: A spruced-up kitchen may not be the magic formula for an orderly mind, but it can’t do it any harm, can it!