What do you think of clutter? Are you a hoarder?

I was having a lovely chat over a coffee and pain au chocolat in French Living with my friend yesterday and besides talking about the subject of food we got onto the subject of clutter. I like a reasonably tidy and organised house to live in and whilst not fanatical about where things lay in the habitat of my choice I feel happier when the place looks tidy and clean. That need for clean clear spaces also counts in my kitchen and although the room is allowed to look a creative mess whilst I'm cooking I usually get the washing up done reasonably quickly after the meal. Occasionally I will wash up the next morning. Occasionally. In fact there are some dishes on the side right now if anyone fancies popping round to do them for me.

Some folk are happy to live with varying degrees of clutter in their homes and work place and some folk love to hoard things and won't throw anything away because it might come in useful one day. My dear departed Dad was a big hoarder and he had a garden shed chock full of odds and ends - like scrap lengths of wood and balls of wire and old plastic sheeting and jars and jars of rusty nails and screws. You could actually hear the shed walls groaning in the early hours with the effort of containing all the junk.

He wouldn't throw anything away because 'you never know when it might come in useful'. He even stored a giant box of fish food for years after he had given up the hobby of keeping tropical fish because 'it might come in useful'. Eventually the knackered old box fell apart, cascading a dried rainbow of smelly guppy food all over the shed floor. Well actually that is not quite true because there was no actual floor space for the stuff to land on. It was all full of clutter! How one family could cram five push bikes, a large chest of drawers and a lathe and all manner of useless crap in one average garden shed is beyond me.

Storage heaven or hell.

So, dear reader are you living in a clutter free world or do you know people who love to hoard things for no rational reason?