For In my first job in journalism, I spent a lot of time in the homes of elderly people whose broken boilers, dry rot or rat colonies had not been dealt with by the council.

Waiting for the repair men who never came, they sat surrounded by piles of things.

I was renting a room and didn’t understand how possessions could corner you in your own home, leaving no way out. I do now. “Get rid of it,” an architect said, surveying my living room, looking at the strange furniture I inherited from an aunt. He was a minimalist and he sometimes looked at me as though wondering whether I was a proper use of space.

I try to be ruthless but it would be so much easier if it was all rented. If my clothes, furniture and those tools I bought in the misguided belief that I would one day do up the house were due back any minute, what a liberation it would be.

Will Pavia

Against On paper, yes, buying clothes looks wasteful. The notion of replacing a perfectly good item with an almost identical perfectly good item sounds preposterous. And yet the thrill of the chase, the trying on, the leaving it on hold, even the handing over of your credit card, are processes that release undeniable endorphins of pleasure.

Heck, we aren’t talking hard drugs. Law-abiding women, and men, need an occasional thrill.

Many women consider their wardrobes as an expression of their lives. Everyone will have her sentimental pieces: the dress she became engaged in, the hat she wore to Ascot, even the old tracksuit that saw her through A levels, university finals and weekend hangovers. Clothes we own have meaning. Asking us to give that up is like saying that one-night stands are just as nice as marriage.

Alice Olins

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