You would scarcely know as much from looking at the picture, but beneath those piles of car magazines and general detritus is a dining table. Thank god the Hootons aren’t appearing on Come Dine With Me…
All of those aforementioned magazines belong to yours truly and, whether it is related to my diagnosed OCD or not, I clearly have a hoarding problem, clutter conundrum, call it whatever you like. I have too much stuff but am loathed to get rid of any of it, let alone the whole lot.
Actually, that’s not quite true. After swallowing a couple of brave pills a few weeks ago, I was able to pick out a (reasonably sizeable) selection of older magazines and take them to the recycling depot at my local supermarket. The task proved much easier than I would ever have anticipated, and never once in the subsequent weeks did I yearn for one of the issues that I disposed of.
If you are being charitable, then you could congratulate me on taking baby steps to declutter my mother’s dining table. On the other hand, you could liken my efforts to removing a deck chair from the Titanic in order to make it weigh less. Whatever, anybody who has ever found themselves attached to inanimate objects, to things which hold little if any importance or significance, will surely understand my predicament.
One of the problems I have is where to store all these piles of magazines. There is frankly not sufficient room in my bedroom because - you guessed it - yet more magazines reside there. I could invest in some magazine holders/boxes but, with so many and yet more copies being posted through my letterbox on a daily basis as a result of ongoing subscriptions, how many such holders would I need to 'invest in'?
A year or so ago, I at least made a concerted effort to tidy things up. As my collection of car magazines comprises as many different titles as you could probably imagine, I sorted all copies into their own distinct piles, based on title. You could call it the newspaper or magazine equivalent of arranging one’s CDs (do people still have those?) in alphabetical order. And we all know the kind of person who does a thing like that is, most probably, a serial killer.
So I am writing this blog with my arms in the air and waving a white flag - I’m in a (somewhat niche) pickle and I don’t know what to do. I could get rid of some more of the older copies in my collection, ones which I’m unlikely to read, but again it’s unlikely that would free up a great deal of space.
Maybe I should keep them as they are, for the market for glossy magazines and paperback books is diminishing as more and more consumers turn to their iPads for reading. I have always thought of myself as somewhat old-school, even old-fashioned in some of the principles I hold dear. Just like keeping a petrol sports car in the garage to savour before the mass cull of ICE vehicles begins in a few years' time, sitting down with a print magazine in hand with a mug of tea beside is a simple pleasure which needs to be kept alive for as long as possible. Well, that’s my excuse, anyway…
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