By Neil Coupe
We have recently been updating our wills, which, while obviously being a good thing to do, does call into mind difficult questions around mortality, what will be left behind, and where it will all go.
To some extent, stripping the emotion away, questions around inheritance of property and money are the easy ones to address.
Ultimately, a few documents will be given to new owners.
We were then prompted to start considering what would happen to our accumulated possessions, the stuff that surrounds us. Do we really expect our children to have to sort through boxes of photos, bank statements, wardrobes full of clothes and shoes, books, a kitchen full of every imaginable implement?
A gentleman in his late 60s I sat next to at a lunch recently was talking about the arrangements he was making.
He had spent a lifetime accumulating a valuable stamp collection, but his five children and 14 grandchildren had never shown any interest in it.
His concern was that when he dies his heirs would be keen to sell the collection as quickly as possible leaving themselves as easy prey for experts to take the collection off their hands for a fraction of their true value.
Instead, he managed to sell the collection for what was described as a ‘six-figure sum’, which I am guessing is not £1,250.25. This, he added, was part of a five-year ‘emptying the nest’ strategy that he was pursuing.
It sounded like a great, if not exactly emotionally intelligent, idea.
We often hear, for example, of down at heel ex-footballers being forced to sell their medal collection, but when we reflect on what can be done with the money, and how it can make people’s lives so much easier, it should not necessarily be a source for anger or bitterness about how life had been so unfair, forcing them into a distressed sale.
Looking round my house at the weekend, I found myself wondering what our heirs will do with the 90% empty cans of paint that we keep to remind us what colours our walls were painted.
That is before I confess to coming across the huge quantities of DVDs we have accumulated. I cannot remember the last time we actually watched one, but around a decade ago, DVDs were an exceptionally common Christmas present, so it feels callous or ungrateful to actually dispose of them. Therefore, the DVD’s stay.
This even applies to the DVD box where the disk has gone missing, as the box has a nice photograph on it.
After Christmas, there is always a clamour to come up with viable New Year’s Resolutions.
One resolution that I do approve of, which would at least limit our stash of possessions, is the idea to only buy clothes or shoes that I confidently expect to wear on at least 30 occasions.
A couple of years ago I read an article about clothes. The suggestion was that we should ensure that all the clothing we have on a hanger should be pointed in one direction, e.g., towards the window.
After we have worn the item, it should be returned to the wardrobe, but pointed in the opposite direction. At the end of the year, anything that was still pointing towards the window, i.e., had not been worn, should be disposed of.
The awful truth is that even if I did that over a three-year period, I would end up giving away 75% of the clothes I own.
If nothing else, it would at least free up space to store some of the obsolete DVDs in perpetuity.
