The Hoarder Within: Fighting the Demon
The first rule of being a minimalist is to not have anything in your house that isn't useful or beautiful. My problem is that I find too many things useful and beautiful. I can look at almost anything and find a potential use for it, which is a problem.
I "collect" things. If I see something that is pretty or useful, I tend to keep buying that thing. Lately, it's been things for organizing, but I also have boxes of knick knacks that are relatively useless, even if they are sentimental or beautiful. I try to find places for most of them, but in this house, I think I will be letting a lot of them go.
As a curb shopper (one who "rescues" items from curbside trash piles), it is too easy to hoard. Free things are the hardest to pass by. I've gotten some great stuff for free from the curb, but I've also collected a lot of junk. Most of it is gone now, given away or sold or simply left behind in this place or that. What is left are things I simply felt I could not live without.
Like my Golden Wheat china , which I just discovered was probably stolen out of the garage at the place I lived in Venice. My mother used to get that china in boxes of Tide detergent, and with four kids, she collected an entire set, which we ate off of for most of our lives. I started collecting it piece by piece from thrift stores as I found it, and I had almost an entire 8 pc set, which I fully intended to use here in my new home. I have only found a few pieces, which were stuck into another box when I ran out of room in the box they were in. I now have only two cups, one saucer and a gravy dish. I'll probably save one cup and saucer for sentimental reasons and sell the others online.
Along with that, someone stole all my everyday dinnerware, which was no big deal, since it came from the Dollar Tree, but it still makes me angry. I had collected the plates, soup bowls and gotten matching cups and cereal bowls as well. $16 + tax, but it's the principal of the thing. I shouldn't have to spend that money again. I hate thieves!
But I digress. The point here is that it's difficult for a recovering hoarder to get rid of ANYTHING, and if I had not been forced to leave my home and move to smaller and smaler spaces, I would probably still have all my junk and still be colllecting more. I watched the TV show "Hoarders," and sadly related to many of those people. Right now, I'm o.k., and I know what triggered my hoarding, which is a problem that has been solved, so there is no further need to surround myself with junk. My plan is to be very careful what furniture and things I bring into this house, and when there is enough, no more comes in unless something goes out.
But there is that shed out back, and I want to do some "trash to treasure" restoration, so I still have to be mindful. I'm sure at some point, I will have to start saying "no" to well-meaning people trying to push their old things on me, and I will no doubt have to fight the urge to curb shop, but I'm pretty sure I have the demon under control for the time being.
Do you have hoarding tendencies? What do you "collect?"
We have moved enough times, almost every year, that I got over buying much. I do keep my books on alternative medicine. Alternative medicine may be forced underground at some point here in the US, so books will preserve that knowledge. I used to buy books all the time. Now only two or three. It is a pain to move them. I will this time get rid of some of the ones that are not important, to ease the moving stress. Last move I spent hours going through old paperwork like old tax files no longer needed. It is amazing how much old paperwork we keep from divorce and other events. The only thing imp after so many years is the end divorce paperwork...the final. The other thing is stuff getting broken in the moves. I don't buy nick naks at this stage for that reason. Theft is an issue as you talked about. I did find through the process some paperwork that needed to be located, lost in the unimportant stuff....the glass in the picture is beautiful. Keep it while it makes you happy. My mom used to sell that kind of glass...it is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteHoarding is not what you are doing. We all tend to buy things we may not need...keep things we could sell or give away.Hoarders collect everything including trash sacks, old food, and it builds up until they can't walk. We had neighbors who were. It took days and 4 industrial sized dumpsters to get the mounds of trash and old food out when he died. There was no room to walk or sit except for one chair. The house was condemned it was so bad.I worked for a wealthy woman whose house, rooms of this house, were filled with expensive clothes, thousands of shoes, purses, and coats. They were even piled up on the floor, 4 feet high. She was 80 and wore none of it. It was not junk though, it was worth many thousands of dollars. She also had pewter statues, western art, that was incredible and worth a fortune too. It is the severe extreme end of the stick that becomes hoarding. Enjoy your glass pieces.
There was a man in my home town who lived in a run-down two-story house in what used to be a nice neighborhood, but had literally become "the hood." They found him dead because a kind former neighbor used to make a welfare call to him every day. He was very miserly, wore horribly worn, dirty clothes. He had saved every newspaper since the 1920's, and they could barely get in to get his body out. Surprisingly, he had a bank deposit box with his will and other important papers, including $3 million dollars worth of stocks and bonds. They found out he was worth over $6 mil total, and owned several very nice properties in other neighborhoods. He would not leave his house because he raised his kids there and his wife died there, and he just couldn't leave. They used to read the paper together every morning and evening (back when there was a morning and an evening paper), so he never threw one out.
DeleteThat glassware is beautiful! I would certainly keep it & love it. Like you, I used to be a curb shopper, & once I found a box of yellow Johnson china - an Australian brand of modern china from the late 1950s. It used to come in 4 strong pastels - blue, green, yellow & pink, & was cheap & sturdy. I could never decide which colour I liked best. Some of it has got broken over my many moves, & it wasn't a full set to start with, but I still have 4 bread&butter plates which give me great pleasure to use. I've also rescued china from the apartment building I lived n when I was earning a decent income. A lot of well-off Asian students lived there, & would leave most of their household things in the rubbish when they moved out. At other times I've rescued chairs & filing equipment from the street (known as "gifts from the god of the streets"). Since moving into this very small community housing flat I've had to get rid of a lot back to the street, & now I have to be strict with myself whenever I see beautiful, useful or just interesting things on the curb.
ReplyDeleteEveryone asks me why I don't unpack, but I have no furniture left. I always said that having everything was boring, and getting it was the fun part. While I miss some of what I had to let go of or things that were stolen, most of it is replaceable. We have apartment complexes like that too, where the rich kids just toss everything about every year and buy new the next year. It's amazing the wonderful things you can find. I missed it this year, but there will besmall tossouts in January and again in May that I will take advantage of by renting a u-Haul pickup and going dumpster diving. That's why I'm giving myself a year to decorate this house, because I'm trying to do most of it for free.
DeleteThere was a person who had a van that was stuffed FULL of bags of stuff. No clue what was in all the WalMart and other bags, but the person never unpacked the van and never tossed anything out. It was stacked on the front passenger seat and between the seats! Once I walked past and saw three bags on the driver's seat. I seriously didn't see where the person was going to put them while driving!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the apartment looked like?