everything has a story
When the house is in a mess and I look around at all the stuff and think to myself that I just want to get a skip and chuck it all out, I take a deep breath and think again. Where did all that stuff come from? What was I doing then? Who was I with at the time? And then the interest builds, like reading old newspapers under the carpet.
How much new stuff comes into the house? Something every day? No, not really. The stuff comes in batches. Sometimes in a small batch and sometimes in a big batch, but always in batches. It rarely comes home in single items. But take a look at anything in the house and there is a story behind it. I look at the screen that I’m seeing this on now and remember how I got that and how the previous one died suddenly. So just like your photo album, your stuff is your life album.
The studio monitors that I have either side of my screen came from Turnkey on Charing Cross Road. They were heavy and I took them on the bus. It took two hours. But they have never let me down. The dvd that sits next to the keyboard as a coaster because it was a bad burn. I took it back out of the trash and decided that it would function as a real coaster. The scissors that I bought from the Brighton Sunday market for 50p. They’re still going and still the best scissors in the house. I still remember that bright sunny Sunday morning whenever I use them.
Stuff isn’t just stuff. Each and every item is like a pebble that you got from the beach or a holiday snap. Good and bad memories. But the moment you look at an object you can remember exactly where you were, who you were with and the rest of the circumstances about that object. No? Well look again. So if you want to forget about something, throw out everything to do with it. And the other things should be out on display and not hidden away in storage.