Dear LPG,  

I have come to the conclusion that there is a little bit of a hoarder in most older people.  It is something I have promised to do something about this year.  I don’t think that my home is the worst I have seen, but having made a positive start to dedicating an hour each week to focusing in on sorting out the backs of those cupboards, nooks and crannies which never really see the light of day, I have worked something out.   

I can’t actually remember when things started to get out of hand but hoarding has to be an age-related infection.  I am not saying that my home is overrun with things but there are certain pockets of memorabilia lurking in a few too many ‘here and there places’ these days and, while the average visitor might need to really look to see a hint of the problem, children are a lot more unforgiving.  I remember being a young mum and having a really organised house.  Back then, my siblings and I would often have a few things to say when we visited our parents, and now the subject often pops to the surface when my children come to visit me.    

This got me asking a few questions, and I found myself on the internet looking for evidence of whether I have turned into an official hoarder.   According to the NHS, the most hoarded items are: ‘newspapers and magazines; books; clothes; leaflets and letters (including junk mail); bills and receipts; containers (including plastic bags and cardboard boxes), and household supplies.  And while not on that list, I also have to include my cassette tape player, Walkman, digital cameras and my collection of rarely-used weight management exercise solutions which, after a few weeks of real pain and even some weight gain, got relegated to the shed in the back garden.  

Taking a look at that list does help me feel a bit better, because I can report that, if the list that the NHS offers has been arranged in order of things we hoard the most, I can breathe out a little.  I have no newspapers, leaflets or junk mail and relatively few books or clothes, although my attic contains every household bill I have ever received (all filed).  But I think their list has missed one very significant category of things that I have far too many of.  I am talking about those gadgets that we all had to have back in the day but that none of us really use anymore.   

I have children who are ready to discard and update without a second thought.  As soon as the latest iPhone, drone or other gismo is advertised, my son will be the first to get one and either put the one that has served him faithfully for the past 6 months in the bin or up for sale on one of those websites where they can offload such things.   

I admit that, over the years, television, magazine and newspaper advertising has compelled me to buy many things that I needed to have or update many things that were designed to change my life but never really did, although I really have kept and cherished them.  I know exactly where my bread maker, my first ever mobile phone, my digital diary, my Filofax, my Casio watch, my halogen oven, my pedometer, and my smoothie maker are, even though I haven’t used any of them for ages.      

If you find yourself with a similar ‘stuff predicament’, I would now appeal to you to adopt a new principle.  Whether you are fired up by the media advertising campaign or the one your friend has just bought, no matter how tempting the product looks, or how much potential it appears to have when it comes to improving your life, perhaps we need to remember that so many of these new innovative objects are designed to be the solution to problems that their inventors have invented along with their unique, must-have solution to it.    

SF, Forest Hill. 
 

 

SF shares the NHS website which offers advice to the hoarders…

 

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… and a bit about a few of the inventions that bit the dust pretty quickly…

 

 

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