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There is something about surrounding oneself with stuff that is appealing. Possessions give a home character, make it seem warmer, cosier, more welcoming – altogether homier. Bookshelves groaning with Agatha Christie paperbacks, cushion-covers from India, chipped homemade pottery disasters, threadbare stuffed animals – all these things are an extension of one’s life, small reminders that one has lived, been there, done that and brought home the souvenir stolen hotel handtowel. I cannot conceive of being the sort of person who can throw these things out; move on with so little sentimental attachment.

Things of beauty, too, give such satisfaction. One does not want to turn into Liberace, naturally, but the insanely expensive Persian rug bought on a whim and followed by years of threatening letters from the credit card company, once paid off becomes mine – an investment, something to hold on to for the grandkids and a conversation piece (or, of course, a solid reminder of the hazards of easy debt).

The minimalist aesthetic has a great deal to recommend it, of course – and there is such a thing as owning too much stuff. Hopelessly wealthy taxpayers and those obsessive-compulsive hoarders one sees frequently on Oprah can attest to that. Then there are those lovely old ladies whose parlours are filled to brimming with overstuffed armchairs, Dresden china, porcelain shepherdesses and Grandfather’s war medals. But given the choice of becoming either the crazy old lady with puffy furniture who collects milk bottles and back issues of Your Family or the elegant dowager in a cold loft containing a futon and one well-appointed barstool, stack up the doilies and make me a jamjar-hoarding pepperpot any day.

I think it was the old man in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View who said something about finding a place in the sun and standing in it for all that one was worth. In collecting the trappings of a life lived and surrounding ourselves with them, we plant ourselves firmly in the earth. Of course one can develop roots without possessions, but people who do not hang on to mementoes of the past just seem less likely to stick around. I find it hard to trust someone who moves in with two suitcases. Gangsters travel light. Serial killers, perhaps, do not (it takes steamer trunks to transport bone-saws, violent pornography, formaldehyde and vast collections of newspaper clippings about Charles Manson and the Son of Sam), but I am veering from the gist of my point. There is a sense of solidity, of comfort and permanence – something implicitly trustworthy about someone who hoards things, for whom the tangible and the concrete hold meaning. A person with a book collection that rivals that of the American Library of Congress thinks twice about picking up and moving on