For journalist Zoe Williams, the process of moving to a new home has become a stark reckoning with a lifetime habit: hoarding. As she packs her belongings, she finds herself surrounded by the physical evidence of years of indecision and accumulation, unable to distinguish sentimental keepsakes from mere junk.
The Great Move: A Shared Crisis of Clutter
Williams notes she is not alone in her predicament. Several friends are also relocating, leading to a communal effort involving borrowed cars for moving awkward furniture and shared tips on services like second-hand book exchanges. The one topic they carefully avoid, however, is their collective inability to part with things and their shared ignorance of basic DIY tasks. They focus on the excitement of their new 'pastures' rather than the fond memories of the homes they are leaving behind.
She muses that not knowing how to paint a skirting board or fix a banister might be forgivable, a simple result of never having tried. Yet, other deficiencies feel more embarrassing in the cold light of a packing box.
Between a Knick-Knack and a Hard Place
The columnist confesses to a series of domestic blind spots. She doesn't know how to remove a decorative light fitting cover. More profoundly, she struggles to define the line between a cherished ornament and plain mess. When is the right time to discard old trainers? Is it when they are holed but still waterproof, or long before?
Her dilemmas are mirrored in the experiences of her peers. One friend discovered an entire drawer dedicated to ribbons of unusable length. Williams herself pores over old Christmas cards, unsure if they are from a forgotten acquaintance or just street finds she felt obliged to file. Her collection of spices includes some older than her 16-year-old child, meaning they have survived at least two previous house moves.
The Ghost of Appliances Past
The graveyard of defunct gadgets presents another hurdle. It feels wrong to discard a soup maker or air fryer without understanding why it failed, she argues, clinging to the faint hope it might spontaneously revive. However, she admits there is simply no excuse for keeping a MiniDisc player.
Williams traces this compulsion to a post-war mentality inherited from her parents' generation: a deep-seated reluctance to throw away anything that 'might go to a good home'. In a characteristically humorous twist, she suggests her entire column is merely an elaborate ruse to find a new owner for some long-out-of-date galangal root.
Ultimately, the moving process forces a humorous yet poignant reflection on attachment, waste, and the sheer difficulty of deciding what truly matters when surrounded by the tangible history of one's daily life.
