I spend a lot of time worrying about stuff, as in physical, you know, stuff. Things I use, things I no longer use, things I’ve never used and never will, things I’d happily give away if anyone wanted them, things which will surely end up in landfill, dumped there by me or my children, or my children’s children. To misquote Larkin: Man hands on stuff to man, or in my case women. They’ll not thank me for it.
Deborah has an interesting take on this, almost as an aside in a radio interview – she’d featured in the Guardian the week before – about how, at the age of 65, she’s renting a room in a house she’s sharing with three people whose ages, she says, barely add up to more than hers. She does so by choice, having no appetite for the upkeep of a house big enough to accommodate visiting grandchildren. Renting, she at least knows how much money is going out, and her children aren’t expecting to inherit much. She says they’re agreed that “money isn’t something you collect, it’s something that allows you to do things”. And what she’s got, after she’s paid the rent, she intends to spend on enjoying life.
This won’t work for everyone, financially or otherwise, but it’s an interesting take. And so is this, which is her view on the shedding of stuff: “I wanted to stop collecting stuff and start living, and the best way to do that is to have constrained living circumstances and actually focus on going out and doing things.”
Now this is an approach to stuff-shedding I hadn’t thought of. Radical. And possibly a trifle annoying to anyone for whom constrained living circumstances aren’t a matter of choice, so have never felt it afforded them much in the way of liberation. But I get where Deborah’s coming from – ditch the dead weight of your largely unnecessary worldly goods to start living, as she puts it, “a better life than I’ve ever lived before because I’m actually doing all the stuff I want to do, and I still come home to a warm room every night”.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
