When my parents announced they were selling the family home and moving to a flat I can remember the feeling of disbelief that fell on me. Their reasoning was sound, it was a couple of years after my Mum had a stroke and she was struggling to get up and down two flights of stairs each day, even getting to the toilet on the half-landing was starting to be an issue.

A ground floor flat made perfect sense.

Dad did most of the clearing and decluttering of the house himself but I helped where I could, including completely emptying the loft on one of the hottest days of the summer, all on my own (my parents were on holiday). By the time they were ready to move they had sold/donated/trashed as much as they could to make their life shrink from a large 3 bedroom semi-detached with a large garage and a shed, into a spacious two bedroom flat with limited storage.

Part of the process included my sister and I taking some items that my parents were happy to pass on – I lay claim to two tapestries of geisha’s my did about 30 yrs ago and that had hung in the living room that entire time – and it was a nice way to take a little of our own personal history with us.

When Dad died, I helped Mum start to clear out his things and we soon figured out who the hoarder of the family was. Driven by pound stores and cheap Amazon deals, we started making little piles of things; 48 pairs of reading glasses, 23 pairs of scissors (varying size), a thin tall set of drawers full of paper and thin card of differing thickness and size (not sure what all that was for), blank DVDs and CDs… and so much more.

The process helped Mum deal with her grief, mostly through shaking her head and laughing at why she’d just found the third set of multi-head screwdrivers, or the second glue gun. Bags of stuff were taken to charity shops, or the dump. And I ended up finding a couple of little reminders of Dad that will mean absolutely nothing to anyone but me.

And now I’m doing the same with Mum’s stuff and the contents of her flat to get it ready to sell.

I’ve taken a couple of small sentimental items, but more important to me was something that I’d never really laid that much stock in before, – or at least not spent much time thinking about them in this way – all the old photo albums.

One photo in particular struck me not because of the composition (it’s a photo of my Dad doing the dishes) but of the instant triggering of memories. I spent about 10 mins just looking at things I’d forgotten all about; the Habitat wallpaper, the wall mounted scales, the old kitchen units with at least 6 layers of paint on them…

It made me think about the photos I take today. It’s so easy to take photos with our phones but I tend to try and make sure to get ‘good’ ones more often than not. Ones that capture the subject well, a nice pose or a smile from my boy, my beautiful wife twirling in her dress, family members framed by the trees as we all go for a walk up the hills.

But I’m realising more and more that it’s the candid ones that show nothing of note that may hold the most value. The memories held in everyday things isn’t something I’d considered until now.

I’ve always been surrounded by photographs. My Dad and my Uncle Bill being keen amateur photographers for a while, I have hazy memories of helping Dad develop some photos at home, and there were slideshows to watch as well. As technology, and life, changed my Dad fell away from the hobbyist approach but still took many photos with a whole host of digital point and shoot cameras over the years.

I too went through a spell of learning how a camera works, trying to improve the pictures I took in the hope that I’d capture great images of landscapes and people. And I took a few good ones but the cycle for me was the same as Dad, once iPhone cameras got good enough it became more of a case of the camera I always had with me, rather than lugging a DSLR around on the off chance of getting a good snap. Add in the whirling dervish that is my son and my iPhone has been my main camera for many years.

I still like to capture ‘good’ images but looking at all the old photos from our family home, I find myself looking more in the background than at the people.

So I’m going to relax a bit and take the photos, capture the every day moments not just when it looks like it might make a good photo (which in my head is loosely defined as, would we print it out and stick it on the wall?).

At the end of all of this though, it doesn’t really matter what the image looks like, how the composition holds up, if the lighting is right or not. Look at the contents of the photo for what they are, memories of times gone by and lives not longer with us.

To trigger any of your richest memories, remember, any photo will do.