Alrite! I cleaned my desk drawer last weekend. Not because I wanted to. Because I could not open it anymore. The drawer had reached what engineers call “critical mass” — the point at which an object can no longer perform its intended function due to the accumulated weight of objects that were never supposed to be in it in the first place.
What I found in that drawer will not surprise anyone over the age of 35. Three old phone chargers, none of which fit any phone currently in my possession. A USB cable that is probably from a device I owned in 2014. A stack of loyalty cards — kopitiam stamps, bookstore points, a video rental membership from a shop that closed in 2018. Pens. So many pens. Most of them do not work. All of them were kept “just in case.” And the thing is — I did not throw any of them away. I looked at them. I remembered acquiring them. I put them back in the drawer. The drawer still does not close properly. I am Gen-X. This is not a storage problem. This is a human problem.
The just in case museum
Every household has one. A drawer. A cupboard. A box in the storeroom. It contains objects that have not been used in years but have also never been thrown away because of four dangerous words: just in case. The spare HDMI cable — just in case the current one, which has been working perfectly for four years, suddenly fails. The instruction manual for a rice cooker you bought in 2016 — just in case you forget how to cook rice, a skill you have possessed since approximately age 12. The birthday card from an aunt you see once every three years — just in case she asks if you kept it.
I am an IT. I manage IT environments. I troubleshoot IT. I configure Wi-Fi networks with SSIDs that took weeks to standardise. I deal with logic and systems and processes all day. And yet, in my own home, I have a drawer that contains a Nokia 3310 charging cable. I have not owned a Nokia 3310 since 2005. The cable has outlasted two marriages, three job changes, and an entire presidential administration. It sits there. Silent. Patient. Useless. And I cannot let it go.
The psychology of the maybe later pile
Psychologists call this the “endowment effect” — we value things more highly simply because they are ours. Once you own something, your brain assigns it an invisible premium. That broken wristwatch in the drawer? Worthless on the open market. In your brain? Priceless. You wore it to your sister’s wedding in 2003. The strap is broken and the battery has been dead since the Obama administration. But you cannot throw it away because throwing it away feels like throwing away the memory. The watch is not a watch anymore. It is a time capsule. A bad time capsule. A time capsule that tells terrible time. But a time capsule nonetheless.
There is also the “sunk cost” problem. You kept this thing for 10 years. That is 10 years of storage space you paid for, 10 years of mental energy you spent not throwing it away. If you throw it out now, those 10 years were wasted. Better to keep it another year. And another. Let your grandchildren deal with it. They will not know what half of it is anyway. “Grandpa, what is this?” “That, my child, is a micro-USB cable. The most frustrating connector ever designed by humans. It only goes in one way, but you will always try all three ways before it works. Keep it. Just in case.”
The fitness equipment that judges me
My gym is well-stocked. Dumbbells. Kettlebells. Resistance bands. A yoga mat. All used regularly because I teach Body Sculpt and actually need this stuff. But in the corner of my equipment area, there is a foam roller that I bought in 2020 during the pandemic fitness craze. I have used it exactly three times. Every time I pass it, I feel a tiny flicker of guilt. The foam roller does not say anything. It does not need to. Its silent cylindrical presence is judgment enough. “You should stretch more.” I know. I should. I will. Maybe later. The foam roller knows I am lying. The foam roller is patient. The foam roller will outlive us all.
This is the dark side of home fitness equipment: it becomes furniture. The resistance bands become drawer filler. The ab wheel becomes a conversation piece. The pull-up bar that you installed in 2021 with great enthusiasm and used for approximately two weeks before your arms informed you that pull-ups are significantly harder at this age than they were at 25 — that pull-up bar is now a very expensive towel rack. You tell yourself you will start again next week. Next week has been arriving every Monday for three years. The pull-up bar does not believe you. Neither does the foam roller. They have formed a support group. You are the topic of discussion.
The one thing I actually threw away
After an hour of sorting through the drawer — an hour I will never get back, an hour I could have spent doing literally anything else — I threw away exactly one thing. One. A loyalty card for a DVD rental shop. The shop has been closed since 2018. The card had five stamps. I will never reach the free rental threshold. The dream is dead. I let it go. Progress.
Look, I am not here to tell you to declutter your life. Marie Kondo has already done that, and honestly, I am not sure she has ever met a Gen-X Malaysian with a drawer full of obsolete charging cables and a foam roller that has become a symbol of personal failure. What I am here to tell you is this: the things you keep are not just things. They are a museum of the person you used to be. The Nokia charger is not a cable. It is 2005. The broken wristwatch is not a watch. It is a wedding in 2003. The DVD rental card is not a card. It is a Friday night ritual that no longer exists in a world of streaming.
Keep the drawer. Keep the museum. But maybe — just maybe — throw away the pens that do not work. You have 47 of them. You need three. The foam roller will have to wait. We are not ready for that conversation yet. XAXAXA!