An Irish Diary

An Irishwoman’s Diary on the life-changing magic of hanging on to stuff

“If you are in the throes of decluttering, I urge you to put down that china shepherdess and pause” Illustration: Aleutie/iStock

Alison Healy's face
Alison Healy
Mon Mar 25 2019 - 00:01

We all know the signs when a house has fallen under the spell of the decluttering queen, Marie Kondo. Bookshelves looking suspiciously light, now that the Wolfhound Guide to Evening Classes 1997 and the pamphlet on Ireland joining the EEC have been purged. The kitchen bin heaving with tubs of herbs purchased when the Spice Girls were last in the charts. And if the homeowners have lost the run of themselves entirely, there will be a skip outside the door containing the mandatory buggy with a wonky wheel.

But if you are in the throes of decluttering, I urge you to put down that china shepherdess and pause. You might have been taking Marie Kondo’s advice, and asking yourself “Does this item spark joy?”, before deciding whether to keep it or not. This is not entirely good advice. If you followed it to its logical conclusion, you might find yourself doing the school run in that black sparkly dress that always makes you look thin. Instead, ask yourself: “Am I liable to regret dumping this, ten years from now?”

Unfortunately, this writer did not take that advice on several occasions and sporadically gets bouts of decluttering regret.

If I could reach back into a skip I hired eight years ago, the first thing I would rescue would be that typewriter. It was a portable Sharp PA 3100 electric typewriter with a correction tape that actually lifted the letters from the page. Impressed? You should be. This was revolutionary 30 years ago.

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I won it in a writing competition organised by Fresh music magazine sometime around 1987. This magazine – sadly short-lived – was Ireland’s answer to Smash Hits. Winning the typewriter made me dream of working in Fresh some day and interviewing the likes of Cry Before Dawn and Those Nervous Animals. Unfortunately, the magazine closed down shortly after my typewriter arrived in the post. I don’t believe the two events were connected.

Many articles were pounded out on that typewriter and they won me a place in journalism college, which led to my first job.

The typewriter should be enjoying its retirement now, resting on a writing desk while bathed in warm sunlight. Instead, I threw it into the skip in the frenzy of moving house.

And then there were the diaries. Years of teenage diaries. They were mind-numbingly boring and simultaneously cringeworthy.

An example of an entry might have been, “We started the life cycle of the fasciola hepatica, aka liver fluke, in biology today. That visit by the nun has convinced me to devote my life to missionary work in Peru. 99 Red Balloons is Number One.”

Glancing through the diaries one day, I knew my children would be embarrassed on my behalf if they read them after my death, so I tossed them in the bin.

About three years later I started to write a book which took the form of diary extracts written by two friends. Yes. Those teenage diaries would have been extremely useful. The book was never published, despite the enthusiastic efforts of my agent. But would things have been different if the book had been informed by the real-life diaries?

We’ll never know.

Other precious items were inadvertently mislaid, such as the letter from Maeve Binchy. Like a million other wannabe writers, the teenage me had written to the author for advice. To my surprise, the generous best-selling author wrote back. I still have the handwritten acknowledgement but her typewritten letter is long gone. The only thing I remember is her observation that publishers will not break into your house to haul your manuscript from your bedside locker. You must send it to them.

There are other regrets, but none to compare with Nigel Reynolds’s experience. The journalist, who believes he was the first to interview JK Rowling, was given a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He later recalled that he had thrown away the book without a moment’s thought. “It was, apparently, one of just 300 copies and would today be worth £15,000. And had I had the foresight to ask JK to sign it, I would probably be £25,000 richer.”

Now that’s some serious decluttering regret. But worse still is the case of the porters at Sotheby’s Bond Street auction house. They sent a wooden box out with the rubbish, not knowing that it contained a work by the artist Lucian Freud. It was valued at £100,000 (more than €117,000) and ended up in a crushing machine. That was some Freudian slip.

Or what about the woman who dropped off an old Apple computer at a Californian recycling centre in 2015? It turned out to be one of only about 200 first-generation desktop computers assembled by Steve Jobs and colleagues in 1976. It subsequently sold for $200,000 (about €177,000).

So perhaps you should step away from that crystal mantelpiece clock and reconsider your decluttering plans.

While you’re doing that, I’ll update my bid on that Sharp PA 3100 typewriter on eBay. It’s never too late to do the right thing.

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