My Hoarding Of Stuff I'll Never Need Until The Day After It's Been Thrown Out!

I have reached the stage of life where my home is less a house and more an archaeological dig site curated by a man who is terrified of the future but also deeply committed to never organising anything.

Every drawer contains a mysterious object that once served a purpose, probably in 1998, and now lurks there like a retired spy waiting for one last mission.

For example: I own fourteen phone chargers, none of which fit any phone manufactured after the fall of the Roman Empire. I keep them because and this is important  the moment I throw them out, I will desperately need one. This is a universal law, like gravity, or the way we British people will form a queue even when we don’t know what it’s for.

My wife, who is a sensible person, occasionally attempts what she calls a “clear‑out”, which is a cheerful domestic phrase meaning “a violent assault on my personal security blanket.” She’ll hold up some object  say, a single paint brush that has clearly been through a war  and ask, “Do you need this?”

Now, the correct answer is obviously “No.” But the real answer, the one my brain supplies, is: “YES, because what if one day I need to handle some odd painting job that requires the need for a paint brush with less hairs on it than I do!?

This is how hoarding works. It’s not about logic. It’s about the deep, primal fear that the universe is waiting waiting  for you to throw something away so it can immediately create a situation in which that exact item becomes essential to your survival. This is known as Cosmic Sod’s Law.

Take the time I finally threw out the box of random screws. You know the one: a rusty tin filled with screws of every size except the one you actually need. I had kept this box for twenty‑three years. It had travelled with me through four homes, two jobs, and a brief but meaningful attempt at DIY.

The very next day  THE NEXT DAY MIND YOU! a shelf fell off the wall. Not just any shelf. The shelf that holds all the other things I don’t need but refuse to throw away. Suddenly I needed a screw of a very specific size, a size that had definitely been in that box, probably breeding with the other screws.

But the box was gone. And so I had to go to the DIY shop, where the woman behind the counter looked at me with the pitying expression of someone who knows I will be back in three days to buy a completely different screw because I have mismeasured something fundamental.

This is why I keep things. All things. Cables. Manuals. Remote controls for devices I no longer own. A mysterious metal bracket that looks like it belongs on a Victorian submarine. A drawer full of takeaway menus from restaurants that closed during the Blair administration. A stack of “important documents” that are actually just warranties for appliances that died during the Olympics.

And don’t get me started on the Box of Random Bits, which contains items so obscure that even archaeologists would shrug. There’s a key to something. A plastic clip that must have once clipped something. A spring that looks like it escaped from a cartoon. A single IKEA dowel, which I keep because IKEA furniture is held together by hope and dowels, and you never know when one will ping off into another dimension.

But here’s the thing: I know  KNOW  that the moment I throw any of it away, the universe will send me a situation requiring that exact object. I will need that dowel. I will need that cable. I will need that weird bracket that looks like it attaches to a trebuchet.

So yes, I hoard. I hoard proudly. Because one day maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but one day, the world will test me. And when it does, I will open my drawer of nonsense, rummage for twenty minutes, and triumphantly declare:

“I definitely used to have the exact thing we need. I threw it out yesterday.”