The bric-a-brac king: my fatal love of small objects

I keep reading about people who have parted with almost everything they owned and still have 50 items. They report a more fulfilling, easier life in every respect; some have even moved into a "tiny house". Minimalism seems convincing and inspiring to me - especially after watching the Netflix documentary of the same name. I'd like to be like that too. But I'm not. I have around 5,000 items. Maybe it's 50,000, I don't really know. But I do know one thing: I love them all.

There's a small wire sculpture by a Tel Aviv artist, a stack of cubes made from the elements iron, coal and copper, an iron-on bead figurine, "Groot" from "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Kaneda" from "Akira", a Lego Millennium Falcon and a miniature replica of the "Burning Man", the wooden sculpture that is burnt every year at the festival of the same name in the Nevada desert (a new one every time, of course). I was there in 2014. A funny old man called Ira, who always wore a top hat and nothing else, had given me the self-made figure as a gift. Because I really liked Ira and have many positive memories of the festival, the figurine is still in my bathroom today. Other rooms also have a museum function. All of them, in fact.

The positive memories are a real problem. You see, they also refer to things that objectively have to be labelled as rubbish and that I don't put up anywhere either. Like this old plastic clothes peg, which is in one of several boxes full of mementos in my attic. Because I used to play with it as a child while my mum hung out the washing, and it comes vividly to mind when I see the peg, I still have it to this day.

My partner has absolutely no sympathy for this kind of sentimentalism. Otherwise, we are very similar, but we couldn't be more different in this respect, which has ruled out sharing a flat in principle. She loves me, my girlfriend said, and would like to see me every day, but unfortunately she feels the exact opposite about my terrifying army of figurines, rock crystals and other bits and bobs.

More or less subtly, she offered to help me clear out my attic (I think she used the word "dump truck"). Since I agree with her and really want to get rid of clutter, I accepted and we climbed the steep stairs. I cast envious glances at my neighbours' compartments. One is completely empty. In another, an assault rifle lies next to three cardboard boxes. Mine is full of books, old toys and much more.

My friend groaned in horror: 'CDs - nobody has them anymore! Get rid of them! No way, I said, there were numerous rarities from the 1990s. And the Duplo, she shouted, my son is far too old for them! Yes, I said, but when he has children? After all, I'd kept mine for him too.

I was given the task of at least roughly sorting. And that's what I did. I found various great things from my childhood, including my self-made ID card from 1986, when Comet Halley flew past the Earth accompanied by the "Giotto" probe, whose lonely disappearance into space saddened me deeply. You can't throw something like that away!

A few days ago, my partner wanted to know how far I'd got. I started talking about dinner coming up soon. How far I'd got, she repeated, looking at me as if I were a six-year-old child who had moved two soft toys and then claimed to have tidied her room. I looked back at her like a six-year-old child who moves two soft toys and can't understand why this achievement isn't recognised as tidying their room.

Thomas Meyer is the new author in the Galaxus magazine. He will be writing regularly from now on. Here is the media release about his start.