“You have a rented storage space!” he laughed contemptuously.

“Whatever happened to the shed in the backyard?”

“It went with the backyard,” I replied, thinking of my tiny

two-bedroom unit for my wife, my two children, and me.

“You need to learn to get rid of your junk,” he sneered.

“If you don’t use it, you don’t need it.”

So I thought of my little stockpile—among the odds and ends,

the baby cot and pram that we may or may not use again;

the antique furniture my grandmother left me, which isn’t

practical, but which I just don’t have the heart to throw away;

a bicycle which my son is still too small for, and the extra chairs

that we might need if we ever have that dinner party we’ve

been planning for years;

In the boxes: old books, comics, and CDs, which, like old friends,

provide a warm reminder of an earlier time, and like all

good friends, we daren’t betray.

My little storeroom is a window to my soul—a snapshot

of all my hopes and dreams, my memories, and relationships.

To discard it would be to reject a part of myself—to amputate

that which I find meaningful.

We all need a little space to store the things we treasure, no

matter if its worth cannot be weighed in gold. No one denies

a bloke a bank account where fictitious ones and zeros

rise and fall in virtual vaults but do not have the comforting

smell of granny’s inlaid side table, or the dusty CD you

used to play over and over again.

So I’ll keep my junk, thank you. I’ll risk being called

pretentious or oversentimental because there’s nothing

wrong with that. Like a child clinging to his teddy bear,

I gain security from my physical memories, and when I

am gone, then they can sell my junk, or my kids can

put a little bit of Daddy in their own storage rooms, which

is impractical, but which they too may lack the heart

to throw away.