hoarding – Auxiliary Memory

Collecting v. Accumulating v. Hoarding

by James Wallace Harris, Sunday, September 27, 2020

Last night I had an epiphany while watching this YouTube video (starting at 6:18):

Seeing how well that CD/LP collection was organized I realized there was nothing wrong with collecting huge quantities of anything if you maintained an organization. I realized there was a difference between collecting and hoarding. And with a quick bit of naval gazing, I realized I was neither a collector nor a hoarder. I was something in between.

I believe I’m a clutterer or accumulator. I haven’t decided which is the better term. I acquire a lot of stuff I like, but I don’t maintain it in a tidy organized fashion, so I’m not really a collector. But then, I’m not traumatized by giving away stuff, I can shed possessions quite easily, so I’m not a hoarder either. This is a nice bit of self-realization.

A real collector will never consider Marie Kondo’s philosophy if their collection is beautifully organized. Hoarders will never give her a second thought either. It’s us clutterers and accumulators that feel Kondo is talking to us.

My problem is I collect stuff half-ass, that I’m a crappy collector. For example, I intentionally collect best-of-the-year science fiction anthologies, and I’m probably approaching 85% of what’s been published. But I don’t shelve my collection properly, I don’t index them, I don’t maintain them in Goodreads, I don’t make them look impressive in nice bookcases. I just acquired them. Some anthologies are in the designated anthology bookcases in a haphazard order, other anthologies are lying around, or stuck in convenient empty places in other bookshelves away from their brethren.

I’ve watched several of those Channel 33RPM videos that showcase people’s LP collections and listening rooms and it’s made me feel guilty about how badly I maintain my collections. I have other smaller collections that I also half-ass maintain. My man cave has no decor appeal at all, it’s just a comfy hovel. When things pile up too uncomfortable levels, I tidy it up, swearing I’ll never let it get untidy again, but weeks later, everything is in piles again.

I’m definitely not a hoarder. Sometimes when I tidy I do it by giving away stuff. It’s easier than making a place for everything and putting everything in its place. And it’s quicker than asking each object if it sparks joy.

I’ve been thinking if I really want to keep all the books I buy, I should have some bookcases built into some rooms. My friends Mike and Betsy did that and it looks great. Susan says we’ll probably stay in this house until we die, so it won’t matter if I ruin its sales appeal by having wall-to-wall bookshelves built.

On the other hand, if I had beautiful bookshelves I’d also feel the need to create an organized library of books, and that would be work. I realize that I’m an accumulator because I’m too lazy to collect properly. A good collector knows their collection, curates it properly, and showcases it in a beautiful presentation.

On Facebook I often see people post photos of their libraries. Some people are like me – they have a bunch of books. Others have made beautiful displays of their book, and I can see they are carefully organized. I can also see they spend more for their books because they get beautiful editions. I do love artistic dust jackets, and I’m willing to spend a little more, but I buy the best quality I can get for the least money, so my shelves mix pedigrees side-by-side with mutts.

Susan and I are well matched when it comes to house decorating — we both prefer being lazy. I’m a bit different because I feel guilty that I don’t make more of an effort. We have friends who make their houses look like creative representations of their personality. And you see that in the video above.

At 68, it’s probably too late to organize my spots. On one paw, I crave to be a minimalist. I’d love to decorate my den with just a large screen TV, great speakers, a network streamer, and two La-Z-Boys. I’d have no videos or albums, just stream everything. For my man cave/library/office I’d have a desk, chair, couch, reading chair, tablet, and computer. My library of books, audiobooks, and magazines would all be digital. On the other paw, I fantasize about creating rooms like the people in the videos, fill them with the physical objects I love, and decorate the walls to reflect what I collected.

The real me learns about a book, album, movie, TV show I want to consume and I order it. I spend my time enjoying creative works – I’m just not creative about collecting them. When I’m finished with one, I get another. And their physical containers just pile up. I accumulate. That causes clutter and I think about Marie Kondo just enough to feel guilty every once in a while. When I write these posts.

JWH

Hoarding Creative Works

by James Wallace Harris, Saturday, September 26, 2020

A hoarder of creative work is called a collector, and a collection of creative works is called a library. That’s if we’re using polite terminology. I have stacks and shelves of books, music, TV shows, and movies that I hoard. I don’t know if I’m a librarian of my collections, or a hoarder of my crap.

It’s a strange kind of possessiveness. My problem is I don’t have enough shelves for all my libraries, so me and my piles of stuff is looking a lot more like your garden variety hoarder of junk.

The other day I decided to reduce the number of DVD/BD discs that Susan and I own down to what would fit into the bookcase we designated as our TV/Movie Library. It was either that or buy another bookcase, and getting another bookcase would mean taking wallspace from something else in our junked up house, and that would only cause anguish over giving something else away.

I figure it’s time to be practical about my hoard of creative works. I’ve got too many books, magazines, LPs, CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. And that’s not even considering the thousands of digital items I own. I know that. I’ve always known that – but why can’t I remember that? Especially like this Tuesday when I was at the used bookstore buying seven large hardbacks I felt for sure I must read but know I never will. Jesus, I’m crazy, or what?

What psychological programming makes me want to possess (collect) so much? Many of my friends when they got a Kindle gave their books to the Friends of the Library. And when they embraced iTunes or Spotify gave away their albums to their kids. And when Netflix came along donated their VHS tapes and DVDs to Goodwill. I didn’t. I went to the Friends of Library book sales and Goodwill and bought all their crap.

We often blame our present hangups on our upbringing, and I guess there might be a case for that here too. When I grew up you got two chances at seeing a TV show. When it premiered in the main season and then again as a rerun in the summer. Evidently the trauma of believing I’d never again see a favorite episode again burned something deep inside of me. That childhood trauma caused me to mass consume VHS tapes and DVDs when they were invented.

Movies used come to town, and if you missed them you’d have to wait years to catch it on TV. Music was on the radio and you had to wait a couple hours for that catchy tune come around again. It’s probably why they only had 40 songs in rotation. It was agony on Golden Oldie Weekends hoping to hear an ancient rock ‘n’ roll hit from the 1950s. Books were something you got at the library that you took back in seven days, and magazines were something you threw away on cleaning day. Creative works were fleeting back then.

When I started earning money I bought my favorite books and albums. At first it wasn’t many. When the VCR came on the market it became possible to save TV shows or buy movies. Susan and I spent $800 on our first video recorder at a time when that was way more money than we could afford. Then came DVDs, and even better, Blu-ray discs. For years Blockbuster Video filled that need to watch what we wanted when we wanted – unless it was checked out. Then we realized we had to own our favorite flicks in case the pressure to see a movie immediately took ahold of us. (Actually, I can’t ever remember that happening.)

Over the decades it became possible to own all the creative works I loved. However, it’s taken me decades to realize that the desire to consume creative works immediately is an unhealthy trait I should try to control.

And even owning some creative works would have been fine if I had been selective about what I acquired. A carefully curated collection of all-time best loved works of art that I was most identified with would have been manageable. It wouldn’t be hoarding, just defining my identity. But something inside me wants to keep every creative work I ever had a momentary infatuation. (I think that might be related to my obsession with memory too. It bugs the crap out of me that I forget anything, and owning a creative work is like a physical memory.)

I guess I feel a need to own everything I love in case I want to relive that initial encounter – but is that true? Because of the internet, there’s been a new paradigm of instant access to creative works online. When I was cleaning out my DVDs yesterday I realized that many of the movies I owned are always available, either from a streaming service like Netflix, or by renting them for far less than the cost of buying (even if I rented them 2-4 times). And since I mostly watched old movies on TCM because I actually prefer the randomness of it’s offering, many of my most loved old movies do appear one or more times during the year, giving me plenty of times to re-watch a film. For those movies I don’t have instant access through checking Just Watch, with a little patience they would show up again on TCM.

I was able to cull over a hundred discs I could part with without too much anguish. However, I still had hundreds that I felt the need to own. Where does that psychological drive come from? What kind of anxiety do I have if I’m afraid I won’t be able to see a TV show or movie when get the urge?

Years ago I calculated I’d save tons of money if I bought books at full price on Amazon whenever I actually was ready to read them over the cost of collecting books at bargain prices thinking I’d read them someday. I’ve bought thousands of books I’ve never read simply because I believed I’d read them someday. Some of those books have been waiting forty years to get the attention of my eyes.

I’ve written essays like this one before trying to talk myself out of hoarding creative works. I shouldn’t need a psychiatrist to figure out I have a hoarding gene that I need to manage. At least my bedroom doesn’t look like this:

Luckily I have another gene that battles with my hoarding gene, a Marie Kondo gene. I also like to declutter and give away junk. If I still owned every creative work I once bought everyone room of my house would look like the photo above. I’m not exaggerating.

I have a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde personality but it’s a battle between my KonMari/Hoarders natural tendencies. I never can come to terms that my need to read books has no relationship to my need to buy books. I write these essays time and time again hoping they will reprogram my brain. They are my way of psychoanalyzing myself but I never get to a behavioral breakthrough. I’m a crappy at self-shrinking, or would that be an auto-analyst?

JWH

Why the Fad to Declutter and Simplify?

By James Wallace Harris, Monday, October 27, 2014

One of the most emailed stories at The New York Times this week was “Kissing Your Socks Goodbye” about a woman in Japan, Marie Kondo, who is famous for extreme tidying up. With shows like Hoarders reaching season 6, it’s obvious that throwing things out is in, and it’s chic to live with less. But why is less more? What’s the virtue of turning all your rooms, closets and drawers into Zen gardens of simplicity? Is it just a fashion, or does it reflect a mental desire for personal change?

You’d think simplifying one’s life would be as natural as drinking water to quench a thirst. Just give up everything you don’t use regularly, and then keep everything else orderly and tidy. Man, I’ve been trying to do that for most of my life and have always failed. Clutter and kipple are relentless! Is that because my personality is disordered, and my outside reflects my inside? The trouble is, my head is far more cluttered than my closets and drawers. I just got too many things to think about, and I don’t want to throw any of those ideas away. If I wasn’t too lazy to photograph the rooms in my house, I could show you I’m reasonably clean and orderly, and far from being a hoarder, but being moderate is bland. If I could photograph the inside of my brain, it would look like this:

By the way, I hope you didn’t find this essay looking for how-to instructions on organizing your life. I’ve got no tips for you. This is a philosophical analysis of why we want to simplify our lives for people who can’t – people like me. Have you ever wondered why an uncluttered life is so prized? Even Henry David Thoreau only lived at Walden Pond for two years, two months and two days, and didn’t spend all his time there even when he implied he was. If we had a completely decluttered home it would be empty. The urge to be Buddha is deceptive, because asceticism is only hiding from the real issues.

We all want to have full lives, not empty ones. We are limited by space and time, but the goal isn’t empty rooms and blank calendars when we seek to simplify. And we don’t want sparse lives. We want maximum use of our time and space. Can you imagine living in the Zen living room above? It conveys serenity, but no action. I am anal enough to keep my books orderly. Here’s a fairly recent photo of my shelves. I can’t photograph my Kindle and Audible books though, but Amazon keeps them reasonably tidy.

My problem is not really clutter, but lack of focus. I want to do too many things, and I have the possessions for lifetimes of activities if I ever made use of all my stuff. But isn’t that what hoarders say about pieces of tinfoil – that they might find a use for it, so why throw it out? I have well over a thousand unread books, and I buy twice as many books each year than I read. I have more hobbies waiting to be started than I have likely years left in my life. My clutter is mental, rather than physical. It’s a time management conundrum, rather than a space management failure.

Last night I watched Print the Legend, a film about the 3D printer movement, especially about Makerbot founder Bre Pettis. Like Steve Jobs, Pettis is driven to build a tech empire. I have no desire to be like that, but I admire the hell out of the people who can focus on one goal and make something happen. I don’t want to clean out all my drawers and closets, I want to clean out my head. Marie Kondo’s advice is to throw away everything that doesn’t thrill you. My problem is I’m thrilled by a very long queue of ideas in my head. To be a person that makes things requires picking one idea and ignoring the rest. I use to think that was writing a novel, and I even still do, but I just can’t throw out all the other stuff piled up in my brain.

I probably could clean up my house so it looked very Zen, but it wouldn’t make me serene. Organizing the words in this essay does. Maybe what cleans up my mind is sweeping out all the thoughts about a particular subject into a nice tidy pile of words.

If I could be the person I dream of being, I’d need to pick one project and work on it till it’s accomplished. I can throw stuff away all day long from my house, I just can’t throw out the piles of junk in my head. But that’s what I need to do. I used to think if I threw out all my physical possessions I’d have a Zen mind. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I do wonder if I could achieve a Zen mind, would my house end up empty?

JWH