Clutter Clearance

Considering how much we have moved around over the years an amazing number of objects have stuck with us, many of them things which do little except clutter up the house and collect dust, yet the thought of getting rid of them is utterly abhorrent. These two copper ornaments are a very good example. I know little about them except what my mother wrote in one of the lists she made of the objects she, in her turn, had dragged round the world with her. Of them she says that one was bought by her while in Zanzibar and the other was given to them by a Jack Adie as a wedding present.

I don't even know what they're really for. They're far too badly made to actually hold coffee, and they look a little like touristy replicas of the big dispensers from which hawkers wandered the streets pouring hot coffee into tiny china cups, the containers being kept hot by a small charcoal fire which sat underneath them. I remember the hawkers in Mombasa advertising their presence by clattering the tiny cups.

The two ornaments are only really of value in two ways, for the copper they contain and for their sentimental value. I keep them because I remember them from way back, and simply haven't the heart to dispose of them, preferring the idea of passing responsibility for a decision on to my children - which is what my mother did when she moved into a care home and left me to clear her flat; and I still feel guilty about some of the things I abandoned to the tender mercies of the house clearance people then.

It wouldn't be so bad if we only had a few objects like this but we have far too many. I just don't know what to do!