“Let me help you with that,” said so many well-meaning people over the years. Thud. “What you have in there, rocks?” And so I’m forced to confess, “Yes. Yes, it’s mostly rocks. Also some T-shirts. And chocolate.”

I can’t say there are no words to describe my love of rocks, but it would take more than one column, more than one newspaper, to do it justice. My love of rocks is on display all around me. I’m way past the point of pretending they are paperweights.

Recently, a friend who likes to sweep in on a cloud of good news, announced to the cats and I that I was a maximalist. “Anu,” she said, “You’re a maximalist!” She said it like she was the angel Gabriel giving young Mary the particularly shocking piece of news he had to relate.

Me? No. Hard no. I don’t have whatever interesting muchness a maximalist has. I don’t decorate, that’s for sure. I don’t layer and create effect and, and, and. But. Looking around.

Minimalism seemed like such a noble aspiration. Clean, ascetic rooms. White walls. Just space. Uncluttered the way I wanted my mind to be. Clear, spare, the way I wanted my writing to be. Didn’t quite work out.

For this mind – my mind – to produce a grocery list, let alone anything with connecting words, I need…things. Things that tell me stories about myself. Things that remind me of people. Things that remind me of things, times and places I forgot.

I want to say I like precious things. And I guess I do. But now we must think of what is precious. I’ve gone on and on about rocks. Not crystals or gems or jewellery. Just rocks. Well: rock, stone, sand, pebbles et al. Once, as a birthday present, a geologist friend gave me a bag of rocks and the promise of lessons on how to classify them. Because I am not a nerd.

The rocks are but one matter. I have bottles of sand from places I’ve never been. Leaves, seeds, dried flowers. And the shells. Shells on trays, in jars with labels, outside sunning themselves. Shells that were gifts. Shells from special days. Shells because I could not breathe for their beauty

And they are as precious to me as old football T-shirts and my can-no-longer-be-used Oddfellows Local tape. I have a whole box labeled “Clothes of nostalgia.” They are half my size and threadbare and they’ll be cremated with me.

There is some form of control, some method to mayhem of my covetous behaviour when nature throws me a petrified leaf. Jars and dishes, mainly. I can’t have these gorgeous, beloved things all higgledy-piggledy. And if I had it in mind to higgle or piggle, think for a moment what a glaring of cats (yes, I did in fact just learn that’s the correct word) and a single UN-peace-keeping dog would make of that.

Hoarding is a real and very serious problem. The International OCD Foundation separates collecting, clutter, hoarding disorder and squalor. They glean their definitions from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (5th edition) and they don’t waffle.

I’m paraphrasing here, but clutter sounds untidy or messy. But it’s a contained messy. A desk, that special kitchen draw