My hubby has 70 shirts, and he refuses to throw any out!

He wasn’t throwing out any shirts, he said. He needed old shirts for doing work around the house.

He needed work-shirts for his shed, for painting, carpentry, plumbing, mowing the lawn, and what-not -basically for carrying out jobs that I was always very grateful for not having to pay to get done, because he did them for free… wearing his old work-shirts.

I pointed out, in tones which gradually rose from level to strident, that the collection of tatty shirts and ratty old jumpers had reached a point where they swamped wardrobes, rails and shelves in four different rooms in the house.

No dice.

He was not throwing out perfectly good shirts that could be used for DIY, he said patiently.

He never had. Never would.

“You own about 100 shirts, of which at least one-third could be thrown out or given away,” I argued.

“You have shirts that are completely washed out, shirts with worn-away collars and cuffs, shirts with missing buttons, musty old shirts that you retrieved from the bin when I tried to throw them out.

“You also have very good-quality shirts that you have never worn or only worn once because you don’t like the feel of the material, and shirts that don’t fit you properly. These could all be given to the charity shop.”

I retrieved some of the dingiest, frayed examples from different shirt-retirement shelves, hooks and drawers, laid them out in neat piles on the spare-room bed, and counted them.

There were 17 that could instantly, and without any consideration whatsoever, be discarded. Straight to the bin.

I did another quick pull of the unworn, barely worn and no-longer-fitting variety. There were at least ten of excellent quality that could immediately go to the charity shop.

I then visited the biggest rail of shirts crammed with - I counted - 44 shirts, several of which were either unworn or worn only once, a few that simply wouldn’t go with anything else, and at least another 15 not-so-golden oldies lying bunched up in untidy bundles on various shelves.

“Some of these have been lying around for more than two decades,” I snarled.

He thought this was hilarious.

“When your good shirts are ironed - the ones you actually wear - they immediately get creased again from the sheer pressure of space on the rail. There’s no room left,” I said desperately.

He smirked.

“Iron them again, so.

“I’ll put up a new rail.”

It is not possible to adequately describe how that went down.

I researched the issue of clutter. None of the findings came as any surprise.

Clutter, I read, causes arguments.

It can put strain on a relationship.

Clutter can lead to a feeling of frustration.

It can result in decreased well-being and negative feelings about the home.

Experts who asked couples in dual-earner households about clutter found that women in messier households had more depressed moods and higher levels of cortisol (the stress hormone.)

Studies indicate that women may well be more affected by clutter-induced stress than men due to societal roles and expectations and that women living in cluttered spaces had higher cortisol levels both day and night.

Research says that the more clutter piles up in a home, the more anxious many women feel.

Some interesting research, based around video tours of people’s homes, showed that managing a lot of possessions was linked to increased levels of cortisol in women, with mothers describing cluttered spaces as chaotic and not fun to live with.

Fathers, however, didn’t really appear to notice the mess - at least, they didn’t mention it - and were reportedly not affected psychologically by it. The research concluded that the women in the study unsurprisingly associated a tidy home with a content and successful family.

In a fascinating but unsurprising twist, however, a 2010 study found men had elevated levels of cortisol if THEY had to do housework in a cluttered environment.

Excessive clutter can impact negatively on the quality of personal interactions, on focus, mood, sleep, and physical health, according to studies.

This is because clutter makes our brains work harder to process the extra visual stimulation.

In other words, if you walk through your kitchen and see loads of stuff piled up on the table and the worktops, you’re mentally noting where these items should be stored, and what needs to be done with them - laundry, groceries, application forms, toys, tools.

There’s also the fact that more mess means more effort to find stuff that has been lost or mislaid. It’s also, of course, much harder to actually get anything done when there’s piles of stuff lying around.

Decluttering is very important to our overall wellbeing and the manageability of the household.

In terms of clothing, the experts say you should only keep stuff that fits your current lifestyle, stuff you love, and stuff you will wear a lot. That you should ask yourself, when did you last wear it?

Because I was obviously no longer speaking to him, I emailed all of this to my husband.

I am still awaiting a response.