Blaise Tapp: Could decluttering YOUR home be worth millions?

Obviously, these plans were limited due to the fact that we were only allowed out once a day and our only source of entertainment was a weekly trip to a German discount supermarket, and as a result, largely centred around the home.

Those unable to go to work set about tackling jobs that had been forgotten about, be it decorating the box room or de-wilding the back garden. Although we still had our day jobs to do in our house, not to mention homeschooling, we did promise ourselves that we would use our empty weekends to bring some order to the cupboards and drawers, not to mention our shed.

Like most people who have been together for 20-odd years, we have baggage and I’m not just talking about the emotional kind.

Clothes that haven’t been worn since the noughties and books that haven’t been read since the advent of Sky Movies and Netflix along with folders of college coursework and Records of Achievement files, presented to us when we left school in 1993.

In an ideal world, we would’ve made use of the time we had earlier in the year and got rid of the stuff that Mrs Tapp dismisses as junk but we didn’t. Using the excuse that the tips were closed, we got on with more important tasks such as learning how to bake and introducing the children to 1980s classics such as The Goonies and Indiana Jones.

The ‘junk’ remains as do the constant reminders that I ‘need to do something about it’. But now I have another excuse after reading the extraordinary story of a hoarder who, having died at the tragically young age of 44, left the contents of his home, rented flat and 24 wheelie bins to his family.

It has been reported that the man’s brother had intended to pay somebody to clear the three-bedroom home and take the contents to a landfill site. That was until the house clearance experts in question told them that they were potentially sitting on a goldmine worth anywhere between £500,000 and £4 million. The unnamed hoarder appears to be a canny man and had scoured online auction sites for gems such as thousands of rare books, vintage chemistry sets, and valuable guitars, all of which he had intended to sell to fund his retirement. It seems that his commitment to securing a nest egg spiralled out of control, forcing him to move out of his home into a B&B for the last year of his life due to a lack of space.

Not throwing stuff out is something that prompts equal measures of frustration and derision from others, but as this somewhat sad tale tells us, we should be careful before we judge. While I am not suggesting for a second that the huge box in my shed containing a range of redundant CDs such as 90s Classic House and Now…. 33 to 40 inclusive will be worth very much at all, there could be items in our own personal midden that might be. There is also my mother’s garage to contend with - a place that has patches of floor that human foot has not touched since Right Said Fred was riding high in the charts.

I have avoided that particular task for the past 25 years but, spurred on by the prospect that I might find the trinket which will change my life, I may just roll up my sleeves and get stuck in.

After all, it is unlikely I will have much else to do this winter.