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But where to start? I'm a little tempted to start with something dramatic, like a chair, or a broken hi-fi, but what if I were to fail to get rid of my first object? Find it too difficult to dispose of. Would that not jeopardise the entire project? I might be so disappointed in myself, that I abandon the whole thing.

I must start with something easy.

I can see, what might be just the thing - the packaging of a pocket dictaphone that has been sitting on the living room shelf for a month. I've been too idle to discard it. Besides, inside it are the operating instructions, and I didn't know where else to put them. Where are we supposed to store operating instructions for Japanese consumer gadgets? Where do Japanese store them? Their houses are supposed to be even smaller than mine. In Japan, my one-bedroom flat would have a whole school of sumo wrestlers living in it. Where on earth do they put all the packaging and manuals, in their tiny tiny Japanese houses?

It's clear I've kept this box because I have nowhere to keep the instruction leaflet. Perhaps, if I read the instruction leaflet, I will find that I don't need it, and the whole thing can be thrown away. I'll try that.

French instructions, don't need those. German and Dutch instructions, don't need those. Guarantee, I think I can live without that. Aha English Spanish Portuguese and Italian instructions. They don't muck about you know, Sony. Anyway um, how to put batteries in, oh I can cope with that. Er how to plug in mains power, that's easy. What all the names of the bits are, yeah well, they're printed on the case of the machine in fact. How to put a tape in, oh come on guys. How to clean the record head, no problem with that. Power plug polarity, erm, it's also written on the case of the machine. Recording, yeah, I'm sorted on that. Voice operated recording, well that just makes me feel anxious frankly, so I'll ignore it. Um, connecting an earphone, protecting a cassette from accidental erasure, yeah OK. Playing a tape, yeah I can do that. Dubbing onto another tape recorder, oh baby nobody dubs, except in music studios, normal people copy, anyhow I think I can cope with that OK. Recording with external microphone, been there done that. Precautions, hmmm, all very sensible, cor, you could wipe your credit card stripe by putting it next to the speaker, wow! Troubleshooting, oh bla bla bla. Specifications, ah, yes, might need those, oh bugger.

Yes it looks like I have to keep the damn thing just in case I ever need to know the impedance of the mic and ear sockets. Hah! But if I cut out that panel and keep it in er, what was it called, oh yes: "carrying pouch (1) (M-630V for Europe and M530V "Sony World Model" only)" - Then I can trash the rest, it's not needed anymore, I'll do that then.

Christ, it was only a bit of packaging, why did it take twenty minutes to work out how to get rid of it? Twenty minutes of the rest of my life working out whether I should throw it away or not.

IN THE BIN AND GONE

Of course, there weren't any Japanese instructions.