things: a really nice person who had a very fabulous life.
Nadine’s house (which I’d never been to before) was like something out of a posh interiors magazine. All the walls in the large hallway, living room and kitchen were painted in an off-white colour that I could tell was not just expensive but hideously expensive. The German-made kitchen units were a gleaming gloss white and there wasn’t a single item of cutlery or crockery out on show on the pristine gleaming black granite work surfaces. The living room, with its untreated ash flooring, the huge leather sofa and expensive looking occasional table; the tastefully decorated bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom that could have come straight out of a designer hotel all had the same opulence about them as the kitchen. I sat down on her posh sofa and Nadine looked at me expectantly awaiting my verdict on her home.
‘You love it don’t you?’
‘Love it?’ I replied. ‘I want to marry it. It’s like . . .’
‘Something out of a posh hotel?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So why the frown?’
I hadn’t been aware that I was frowning but now that she pointed it out . . .
‘Well the thing is, mate . . .’
‘What?’
‘I don’t understand: where’s all your stuff?’
‘What stuff?’
‘You know, stuff? Where are all your books and CDs? Where’s all your ornaments from tacky holidays and piles of unread newspapers and magazines?’
‘You’re describing your house aren’t you?’
‘I thought I was describing everyone’s house until I saw yours,’ I replied. ‘Everyone in the world has a house full of stuff apart from you. How come?’
Nadine shrugged. ‘We’ve got no CDs because all our music is on our i-Pods, we’ve got no DVDs because we rent them from Blockbuster, we’ve got no books because once I read them I take them down to Oxfam and we’ve got no magazines because if I see an article I’m interested in I rip it out and then recycle the rest. I’ve never been a hoarder. I just can’t see the point.’
Once I got over the shock that my friend of the past decade is a closet non-hoarder we settled into our normal groove of conversation and laughter pausing only to consume the posh lunch she’d prepared. Around five, I decided it was time to leave and, kissing her goodbye, made my way to the tube station. As I walked along Chiswick High Street picking my way through the Christmas shoppers I found myself thinking about Nadine’s pristine home and her comment about having never been a hoarder. How can she never have been a hoarder? Isn’t hoarding what normal people do? And I thought about my house and the hundreds of books and CDs and DVDs in the living room and then I thought about the various bedrooms and all of the stuff in there too but then my mind came to rest at the top of the house and I found myself deciding that tomorrow was going to be the day that I would begin de-stuffing my entire house, starting with the area with the highest concentration of stuff and the number-one plague of my life: the loft.
De-stuffing the loft a week before Christmas wasn’t the smartest move ever, especially as there were plenty of things that were a higher priority like reassembling the cast-iron bed frame in the front bedroom. This was so that when Claire’s mum came to stay over Christmas she wouldn’t be reduced to sharing a bed with her granddaughter the human octopus. Still, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law, my current enthusiasm wasn’t aimed at bed maintenance and was instead focused on the myth that having a loft marginally less filled with crap might somehow make me feel more Zen and less jealous of the lady-with-no-stuff.
I started by taking everything out and doing a kind of inventory, which made for quite a
Nadine’s house (which I’d never been to before) was like something out of a posh interiors magazine. All the walls in the large hallway, living room and kitchen were painted in an off-white colour that I could tell was not just expensive but hideously expensive. The German-made kitchen units were a gleaming gloss white and there wasn’t a single item of cutlery or crockery out on show on the pristine gleaming black granite work surfaces. The living room, with its untreated ash flooring, the huge leather sofa and expensive looking occasional table; the tastefully decorated bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom that could have come straight out of a designer hotel all had the same opulence about them as the kitchen. I sat down on her posh sofa and Nadine looked at me expectantly awaiting my verdict on her home.
‘You love it don’t you?’
‘Love it?’ I replied. ‘I want to marry it. It’s like . . .’
‘Something out of a posh hotel?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So why the frown?’
I hadn’t been aware that I was frowning but now that she pointed it out . . .
‘Well the thing is, mate . . .’
‘What?’
‘I don’t understand: where’s all your stuff?’
‘What stuff?’
‘You know, stuff? Where are all your books and CDs? Where’s all your ornaments from tacky holidays and piles of unread newspapers and magazines?’
‘You’re describing your house aren’t you?’
‘I thought I was describing everyone’s house until I saw yours,’ I replied. ‘Everyone in the world has a house full of stuff apart from you. How come?’
Nadine shrugged. ‘We’ve got no CDs because all our music is on our i-Pods, we’ve got no DVDs because we rent them from Blockbuster, we’ve got no books because once I read them I take them down to Oxfam and we’ve got no magazines because if I see an article I’m interested in I rip it out and then recycle the rest. I’ve never been a hoarder. I just can’t see the point.’
Once I got over the shock that my friend of the past decade is a closet non-hoarder we settled into our normal groove of conversation and laughter pausing only to consume the posh lunch she’d prepared. Around five, I decided it was time to leave and, kissing her goodbye, made my way to the tube station. As I walked along Chiswick High Street picking my way through the Christmas shoppers I found myself thinking about Nadine’s pristine home and her comment about having never been a hoarder. How can she never have been a hoarder? Isn’t hoarding what normal people do? And I thought about my house and the hundreds of books and CDs and DVDs in the living room and then I thought about the various bedrooms and all of the stuff in there too but then my mind came to rest at the top of the house and I found myself deciding that tomorrow was going to be the day that I would begin de-stuffing my entire house, starting with the area with the highest concentration of stuff and the number-one plague of my life: the loft.
De-stuffing the loft a week before Christmas wasn’t the smartest move ever, especially as there were plenty of things that were a higher priority like reassembling the cast-iron bed frame in the front bedroom. This was so that when Claire’s mum came to stay over Christmas she wouldn’t be reduced to sharing a bed with her granddaughter the human octopus. Still, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law, my current enthusiasm wasn’t aimed at bed maintenance and was instead focused on the myth that having a loft marginally less filled with crap might somehow make me feel more Zen and less jealous of the lady-with-no-stuff.
I started by taking everything out and doing a kind of inventory, which made for quite a
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