SHORT of space? Is your house cluttered? Do you have a cupboard you dare not open without wearing a yellow hard hat for fear of what might fall out and hit you on the head?
According to a report from the Royal Institute of British Architects, modern homes lack storage space. They even look at alternative storage methods such as saving stuff somewhere else.
This has been perfected by both our daughters. They store their stuff at our house.
Maria and I should have lots of space now there are only the two of us in the family home, even with the occasional load dumped on us by our offspring.
We may have a house of many rooms (well, several) but those architects are right. There isn’t enough storage space.
We used a small bedroom as a dressing room with rails for clothes and big mirrors. This was a nice extravagance.
But we had to convert it back into a bedroom when guests were due to arrive from America which meant we had to have a clear-out of clothes we didn’t need to fit what was left into wardrobes. Choosing what to discard was painful.
“You never wear these. Throw them out.”
“These are my Manchester United shirts. They stay.”
And how do you de-clutter the usual detritus of a home? How do you decide something, that once had enough value to save, is now junk?
Each one usually comes wrapped in memories.
Maria, for instance, refuses to get rid of her collection of birthday cards she has received that stretches back to the year Dot (which is just before the year Com).
Possibly the future will be different.
Books and records and photographs will inevitably be stored on computer disk or memory stick.
But you can’t save Manchester United shirts on either device.
And they’re not going.
