Decluttering drawers: the local election canvass of the cleaning world

I’VE been cleaning out some drawers. It’s a thankless dispiriting task. The effects are hard to gauge, it takes ages and only a small area is covered. It’s the local election canvass of the decluttering world.

First there are the receipts. For the self-employed, every receipt is a conversation between you and an imaginary Revenue official where you both argue the finer points of tax-deductibility. The imaginary Revenue official, in my case played by Charles Dance (Game of Thrones’ Tywin Lannister), stares coldly as I protest that “Snickers and Chipsticks were an expense incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily for the writing process”

A lot of the space is take up by manuals, trouble-shooting guides that tell you in 26 different languages what the hoover will do if you dare ask it to hoover up anything it disagrees with.