I am moving house and being a lifelong hoarder has finally caught up with me | Zoe Williams

"The main thing we don't talk about is that none of us know how to do anything and that all of us are hoarders. There's a reason not to know the big stuff how to paint a skirting board, how to mend a bannister spindle never doing a thing without landing in a place of pure ignorance. Probably if any of us were 25, we'd be no worse at painting than any other 25-year-old."

"Other stuff is frankly embarrassing; I don't know how to get the decorative cover off a light fitting; I don't really know the difference between a knick-knack and some mess; I haven't got the trace of a clue about when is the right time to throw away a pair of trainers is it when the fabric is full of holes but they're still watertight, or is it before then? My friend, clearing out a chest of drawers, found one filled entirely with different-coloured ribbon of unusable length."

"I stare at old Christmas cards and can't figure out whether they're from a person I've tragically forgotten, or if I just found them on the street and decided the right thing to do was to file them. I have spices that are older than my youngest child (16), so I must have moved house with them twice already. I have more defunct appliances than I could name, and fair enough, it is hard to bin a soup maker or an air fryer when you have no clue why they stopped working if it's that random, who's to say they won't start working again?"

A group of friends preparing to move share logistical details like car space and secondhand exchanges while avoiding sentimental reflections. Each person lacks practical DIY skills and hides a tendency to hoard. Examples include not knowing how to remove a light fitting cover, uncertainty about when to discard worn trainers, drawers full of unusable ribbon, and spices kept for decades. Many retain defunct appliances and obsolete gadgets in the hope they might work again. The reluctance to dispose of items traces to a generational habit of saving things that might be useful to someone else.

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