In a spectacular act of self-delusion, I decided last weekend to “start cleaning up the home office.” Anyone who has ever made this announcement knows what it really means: moving things from one pile to a slightly different pile while feeling virtuous about it.

But this time, something happened. I actually opened a couple of boxes that had sat untouched since we moved in nearly ten years ago. They had survived three presidents, two pandemics’ worth of resolutions and a truly heroic amount of dust, and had been quietly maturing like a cheap cheese. Archaeologists would have charged admission.

At the bottom of one of them, I found it: my army Carnet d’habillement, August 1975.

For the uninitiated, this is the little booklet in which the military meticulously records every item of clothing and equipment issued to you. Every sock. Every shirt. Every button’s worth of hope that you’ll return it in the condition received. It is the only document in my life that has ever counted my underwear with such seriousness. My bank has never shown such interest.

I scanned it immediately for my digital library, because nothing says “I’m decluttering” like creating a perfect digital copy of something I will never need, and filing it in a folder I will never open. Efficiency!

Reading through it was a trip down memory lane, if memory lane were paved with itchy wool and boots that had apparently been designed by someone who hated feet. There it all was: the uniforms that fit nobody properly, the bits of kit whose purpose was explained once, in a hurry, by someone shouting. Every line brought back a smell, a sound, or a sergeant.

Naturally, everything had to go back. The army, bless its bureaucratic heart, was quite firm on this. You could not keep the trousers. You could not keep the boots. You could not keep the little tin thing that nobody ever understood. The only things I walked away with were the insignia I had earned, which are the military equivalent of a participation trophy, only with more push-ups attached.

And the belt.

Ah, the belt. Somehow, through a clerical oversight, a stroke of cunning, or the quartermaster looking the other way at the right moment (I will never tell), the leather belt stayed with me. And here is the best part: it was not new even then. It had already served some unknown predecessor, possibly through a war, possibly through several bad lunches. It came to me pre-owned, pre-loved and pre-softened.

Fifty years later, I still wear it most days. Fifty years! It has outlasted my hairline, three cars, countless diets, and at least two sets of “I’ll start Monday” resolutions. My waistline has fluctuated like a stock market in turmoil, and yet the belt has stoically adapted, quietly sacrificing a few extra holes without complaint. It has never once judged me. This is more than I can say for my bathroom scale.

There is a lesson here, and it’s a deep one: the army issued me a whole wardrobe, demanded it all back, and the only thing that endured was the one item that was already old. Presumably it also was the only one that never tried to be fashionable.

So the office is not yet clean. The boxes are not yet sorted. But I have a scanned booklet, a head full of memories, and a belt that holds my trousers up with the quiet dignity of half a century of service.

The army may have its records, but I have the belt. And in the end, that’s the only item on the inventory that really matters.

Reporting for duty, as always, at hole number four.