Kerb your enthusiasm: why hard rubbish keeps ending up in my home

Even as I was loading them into the car, I suspected they were an error. One of the glass chandeliers was as big as a fit ball and the other was strewn with ornamental wire springs that I didn’t think I loved, but in the heat of the moment it was hard to be sure.

I drove home, glass droplets knocking together all the way. All through lunch and then for much of the afternoon, I ruminated about the huge, opulent light fixtures filling my back seat.

We already have light fixtures hanging from our ceilings, and spare light fixtures resting in our cupboards. The latest finds were too big to stash in the house but, given the tinkling, too noisy to keep in the car. What to do? I stopped driving. Then, after a week, I did something I have never done with hard rubbish before. I took it to the op shop.

Picking up what others discard is definitely compulsive and only sometimes rational. For every copper-based saucepan, 1950s concrete planter, indoor palm and vintage Burberry umbrella I have found, there has been countless too-chunky mugs, water-stained rolls of wallpaper and ornaments that, on reflection, just aren’t that ornamental.

And the trouble is that people like me who enjoy collecting hard rubbish nearly always have a hard time throwing stuff out.

In my garden I have a great pile of Carrara marble off-cuts from when a nearby house was renovated. I have enough Italian non-slip tiles (left over from a hospital rebuild) to line a domestic bathroom. I have found – and kept – three outdoor tables, all sorts of chairs, five bird baths and – this was one of my more bizarre finds – the concrete pedestal bases of another 11 bird baths.

Worse still, I think it’s genetic or at the very least catchy. My young adult children now bring home non-functional bikes, paintings and mirrors. Have I mentioned we have a lack-of-space issue?

Bad luck for them – or maybe good luck given how cramped things are getting – my children can’t remember the hard rubbish heyday.