Last week, on the train, a co-passenger was holding faith on how his wife was like a magpie - a born collector of things. He was saying that she just couldn't resist a piece of string. "I bet my wife has a hundred miles of string" he said. I was at once reminded of my aunt who, every time she opened a parcel, would spend an hour undoing each knot, wind up the string and put it away. She used to say you can never tell when you will need a piece of string. Across the aisle another man said, "my wife keeps boxes, shoe boxes, chocolate boxes, cigar boxes, she even keeps big boxes to keep little boxes in it". I piped in, with how my mother kept the paper that things were wrapped in. It has come to such a pass, that nowadays when I give her a present, I don't wrap it but give the wrapping paper separately. Even as we were talking I noticed the man whose wife collects string, bend down to pick up a pin. I asked him, "Why are you sticking the pin on your pocket flap?"  "You never know when you'll need one," he said.

Every woman is a thing-keeper at heart.  Men are thing-keepers too, but they keep only sensible things like lapsed driving licenses, or the key to the front door of the house they lived in ten years ago. As far as I can tell, the reason women keep things is because they hate to throw them away.  My mother for instance has a collection of things in her fridge which is the envy of thing-collectors anywhere.  The last time I looked in, there was a plate with a spoonful of mashed potato, the cup of fruit salad I didn't eat last Sunday, a thimble full of chutney, milk in three different containers and flowers in boxes.  She also has a good collection of things in the medicine chest-like an ointment jar without a label (for itching) a box full of white pills (must be for something) an assortment of bottles with brown stuff caked in the bottom and sheets of capsules with the expiry dates going back to the dark ages.

My husband, an avowed-hater of clutter fills the lumber room with crafts of all sizes and the thermocol packing in which  his precious computers come wrapped. There is no one to beat my daughter-in-law's mother whose cupboards overflow with children's school uniforms (the children are all now in their thirties) and other cast off  clothes.  She just can't bear to discard anything, consequently the clothes used currently lie in stacks on chairs and beds, while clothes 20 years old take up all the cupboard spaces.