Published at 11:21, Tuesday, 01 December 2009

They do say you should keep in your home only that which is essentially useful or exceptionally beautiful. I guess life could be said to follow similar rules.

Anything fitting neither category needs to be hurled out with the garbage, recycled, dumped, forgotten, deleted from the mashings of trivia and inconsequential flimflam we store involuntarily in our wheelie-bin brains.

At least, that’s the theory. I think they call it minimalist living – of which, I confess with some pride, I know nothing.

I reckon they invented minimalism so they could make hour-long TV programmes about throwing out good stuff and replacing it with flat-pack, build-your-own balsa wood boudoir chairs with matching collapsible chaise longue, DIY accessories and mysteriously leftover screws.

And from the wheelie-bin brain? Well, there’s a lot they’d like us to forget.

Never understood it myself. In common with my like-minded friend Beryl, I’m unaware of ever knowingly having bought or accepted anything I hadn’t considered useful or beautiful. Which means my home is filled with an assortment of what minimalists might describe as tat... and I call life.

It’s the time of year, trendy designers tell us, to clear out the old and past-its-best to make way for the sparkling trimmings of Christmas and the pristine clean-sheet of new year.

Ditto every other aspect of who we are. Early December, Advent – quite the perfect window of opportunity for wiping out useless memories, shedding unnecessary guilt, pruning out toxic friendships, in preparation for starting afresh... on a sparse, fruit and veg diet.

There might be something in that, if you’re of the ruthlessly disposable frame of mind. Some of us never achieved that though. When we open the cupboard doors of our homes – and of our lives – the old, unfashionable and almost forgotten contents tumble out in a rush to trip us up.

My suspicion is that there are more of us (physical and emotional hoarders) than there are of the others (ruthless dumpers). And for that, I reckon we should all be truly grateful.

If it were natural, right and universally routine for the past to be thrown out without a thought, there’d be no opportunity to reflect on the inappropriateness of what once was considered acceptable. Secrets, for instance.

For example, hundreds of defenceless Irish children from the 1960s to the 1990s would not yet have found the courage finally to allow old crimes of abuse against them tumble out from the cupboards of their lives. They wouldn’t have dared to find someone to hear their pain, assure them that sex assaults committed by paedophile priests were not their fault – and perhaps begin to heal.

The Catholic Church has been accused of covering up 30 years of child sex abuse by priests in order to protect its name, its finances and its clergy from harm. The Archbishop of Dublin has only now issued an apology.

Only now have scores of those damaged children, after carrying their burdens into adulthood, dared to seek support from helplines and rape counselling services.

If it were so easy to let bygones by bygones, to discard the less than lovely, forget the unsavoury, sweep away the no longer useful, there’d be neither need nor desire for investigations by an ongoing official inquiry into the Iraq war. And no point to scrutiny as to whether it was entered into legally, ethically or at least honestly by a national leader who is no longer prime minister.

Rummaging through the storage bins of our past lives teaches us the lessons of history from which we learn how to conduct our future.

Do we really need to dwell on how badly behaved were bankers who led us to the brink of bankruptcy? Should we trouble our cluttered minds with a continuing obscene bonus culture and demands that we pay-up, shut-up and move on?

Beryl and I would say probably not – but we’re both hoarders so we would, wouldn’t we? We don’t easily throw out the used, dog-eared and might-come-in-useful-one-day items we’ve hung onto determinedly. That’s just the way we are.

Had we been the types to empty the Hoover bags of our lives to make way for something less durable – and a lot less troubling – we’d not be inclined to spare thoughts of sympathy for fellow Cumbrians whose homes were ruthlessly minimalised by floods. We wouldn’t be tempted to offer practical and emotional support – after all, that which we found less than useful or beautiful would have no value or meaning to us.

We may not be the neatest, most organised people in the world but we make no apology for that. In fact, we believe we should defend our rights to untidy minds to our final breaths. From the mess of the ostensibly useless and no longer beautiful we reckon we can learn to make a better fist of things next time round.

So, before you grasp at the inspiring motivational sermonising of a telly-inflated odd-job man and chuck out your chintz, think a while. Before you’re persuaded to shrug off an old war, past abuse, last week’s crisis, last year’s banking collapse as all-gone-now-and-time-to-move-on, consider making a fuss.

Is everything stored in home and life really just a load of old tat or does it form the framework of something genuinely worthwhile?

One man’s useless is another’s irreplaceable and their are plenty who would love you to bin the irreplaceable – they profit from its loss.

Shoes, jewellery, ornaments, love letters, furniture, books, standards, principles, friendships, what you always knew to be right and wrong – hang on to them all.

Keep them all in the store cupboards of your life and know that one day, when they tumble out to trip you up, you’ll be grateful – and not at all surprised – to remember that the reasons for holding fast to what was once treasured and valued were actually very good ones.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk