We asked around the studio for the one object nobody could bring themselves to bin. The list came back longer and stranger than expected.
A dead watch, stopped at a time that meant something once and now means only stopped. Three phone chargers for phones that no longer exist. A cinema ticket, faded to a pale receipt-grey, for a film someone saw with someone they no longer speak to. A single earring. A hotel pen. A cassette with no case and no player anywhere in the building.
None of these do anything. That is the point. An object earns its keep when it stops being useful and starts being evidence: proof that a day happened, that you were there, that it mattered enough to survive the last four moves.
The technical term for this, in decluttering circles, is clutter. We think that’s unkind. A drawer of useless keepsakes is a small, badly organised museum of your own life, and you are its only visitor, and admission is free.
We make pins partly because a pin is honest about this from the start. It was never going to be useful. It skips straight to the keeping.