TOM UTLEY: Every marriage is made up of a hoarder and a de-clutterer. I've long resisted Mrs U's 勧める to 貯蔵所 my stuff, but now she's on the 不快な/攻撃!

When my scholarly 新聞記者/雑誌記者 grandfather died in 1974, my grandmother 決定するd to get rid of his enormous library.

She'd been itching to do it for years, since his 調書をとる/予約するs filled almost every square インチ of their modest flat. But she told me that before she took them to the auctioneers or the charity shop, I could choose five to keep and remember him by.

押し進めるing my luck, I said I'd like to have the に引き続いて:

1. His 完全にする Oxford English Dictionary, in 13 抱擁する 容積/容量s, 含むing one 補足(する);

2. His 1913 版 of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in 30 容積/容量s;

Every marriage is made up of one partner who is a hoarder, while the other is a de-clutterer, writes Tom Utley

Every marriage is made up of one partner who is a hoarder, while the other is a de-clutterer, 令状s Tom Utley

3. His collection of an extensively annotated 版 of the 完全にする 作品 Of Shakespeare, in 40 容積/容量s;

4. His 高級な, five-容積/容量, 特に bound and illustrated, 限られた/立憲的な 版 of The History Of The Time s, which had been given to him by that newspaper's then proprietor, J. J. Astor, as a thank you for his work on editing it;

5. The publisher's 模造の copy of his best-selling biography of the then Prince of むちの跡s, To Be A King, which he wrote when King Charles was the 19-year-old 相続人 to the 王位.

Now, my grandmother had a 幅の広い streak of mischief in her, and it was perhaps because she recognised something of the same 質 in me that she laughed and agreed to my choices.

So it was that those five of my grandfather Dermot Morrah's 調書をとる/予約するs ― all 89 容積/容量s of them ― joined the hundreds of others in my collection, which has been swelling throughout the 50 years that have passed since.

Nowadays, they line almost every 塀で囲む in our house and fill every 解放する/自由な-standing bookcase. They are piled up in cupboards and wardrobes, on 最高の,を越す of chests of drawers and heaped on the 床に打ち倒すs of the rooms vacated when three of our four sons left home.

I couldn't 耐える to part with any of them. The Kindle may be a wonderful piece of 科学(工学)技術, giving easily portable 接近 to millions of 調書をとる/予約するs at the touch of a 審査する.

But, as many have 観察するd, it is no proper 代用品,人 for 有形の 調書をとる/予約するs, with all the memories they evoke through their look, feel and smell.

But then nor, for that 事柄, could I willingly get rid of most of the other 所持品 I've 蓄積するd over the years: old favourite sweaters, now so moth-eaten as to be unwearable; two 半分-機能(する)/行事ing steam アイロンをかけるs, only わずかに leaky (井戸/弁護士席, we may need them if our new one stops working); an electric tiller for the garden, used only once because I 設立する there was no room for tilling between Mrs U's shrubs; dozens of chargers and leads for electronic 装置s that gave up the ghost long ago (who knows when they might come in handy?).

Former X-Factor contestant Stacy Solomon hosts Sort Your Life Out which?follows the efforts of families with shockingly cluttered homes to get rid of possessions they don't really need

Former X-Factor contestant Stacy Solomon hosts Sort Your Life Out which?follows the 成果/努力s of families with shockingly cluttered homes to get rid of 所有/入手s they don't really need

Oddly, however, my wife doesn't seem to 株 my practical 見解(をとる) of the need to 粘着する on to stuff that may turn out to be useful one day.

She even appears to regard my 不本意 to part with seldom-or-never-used 所有/入手s as a 穏やかな form of mental illness.

When she finishes a 調書をとる/予約する she has enjoyed, she tends to pass it on to one of her four sisters. When I read one, I keep it ― whether I enjoy it or not.

But then, in my experience, every marriage is made up of one partner who is a hoarder, while the other is a de-clutterer.

Until now, I'm happy to 報告(する)/憶測, I've 首尾よく resisted Mrs U's 勧める to get rid of most of my stuff. But just lately, she's been on the 不快な/攻撃.

Beloved old sweaters have gone 行方不明の, at about the same time as mysterious 黒人/ボイコット 解雇(する)s have appeared in the hallway, 運命にあるd for the 再生利用するing centre or the charity shop.

一方/合間, she keeps asking ぎこちない questions, such as: 'Can you explain 正確に/まさに why you still need all these old road atlases, or the 1978 版 of The Good Pub Guide?'

I tell her that the atlases will be useful if the satnav packs up, while the pub guide will be a hugely 価値のある source for any 未来 column I may 令状 about the 歓待 部門, then and now. But she seems deaf to masculine 推論する/理由.

I 非難する the former X Factor contestant, Stacey Solomon ― or rather the show she hosts on BBC TV, Sort Your Life Out, the 最新の 一連の which ended this week.

For those who have never seen it, the programme is based on what may sound like a 深く,強烈に unpromising 決まり文句/製法 for gripping telly, as it 簡単に follows the 成果/努力s of families with shockingly cluttered homes to get rid of 所有/入手s they don't really need.?

But 現実に it makes strangely 説得力のある and often moving 見解(をとる)ing ― and I say this not only because I have a soft 位置/汚点/見つけ出す for Stacey, who 陳列する,発揮するs an engaging, 甘い nature of a 肉親,親類 d that's very hard to feign. No, the decluttering 過程 really does seem to 解除する an enormous 負わせる from the featured families' minds, making their lives much easier and happier.

Anyway, Mrs U has been 麻薬中毒の ― and since she started watching Sort Your Life Out, she's been looking at my hoarded 所有/入手s in much the same way as my grandmother used to 注目する,もくろむ my grandfather's library.

But if Stacey Solomon reignited my wife's wish to sort my life out, whether I liked it or not, it was our family 集会 this 復活祭 that turned her wistful 勧める to アイロンをかける 決意.

For it brought home to her that with all my clutter, we 簡単に won't have room to house our growing family when they want to stay.

Throughout the long 週末, there were ten of us sleeping in the house ― ourselves, our 居住(者) son and two other sons up in London from the West Country, with their wives and three of our four grandchildren (the fourth and his parents had to go home in the evening, because there wasn't a square インチ of 床に打ち倒す space left for them).

With (軍の)野営地,陣営 beds and an 空気/公表する-mattress on the 床に打ち倒す, we managed to squeeze two of the children and their parents into the junk room-cum-library that used to be one of the boys' bedrooms, before Mrs U got rid of the bed.

Another son and his wife squashed into our tiny spare room, with their baby in his cot, beneath bookshelves 耐えるing such useful 言及/関連 作品 as copies of the boys' old school magazines and 地理学 textbooks from the 早期に 1960s, when Beijing was Peking and Zimbabwe was Rhodesia.

But the grandchildren are still tiny. As they grow, how will we ever find room for them between the piles of 調書をとる/予約するs, first-世代 computers, broken lamps, old vacuum cleaners and chests 十分な of board games on the 床に打ち倒す?

I 恐れる I know Mrs U's answer to that ― and, oh, Lord, I feel myself 弱めるing as I 令状.

Could it be that I, too, like all those families on Stacey Solomon's show, might feel a 重量挙げ from my life, if only I were to 認める my wife's wish to chuck out much of my stuff?

Is it even possible that I might be able to get by with より小数の than 50 pairs of old socks ― and even a trimmed-負かす/撃墜する library?

Does anyone fancy my copy of Ritchie's First Steps In Latin, わずかに foxed, or The Guinness 調書をとる/予約する Of 記録,記録的な/記録するs, 1964?