Hoarding vs. Collecting vs Getting Rid of All That Junk
Collecting stuff was a big thing when I was a kid. Almost every friend I had collected something, whether it was stamps, coins, baseball cards, soda/beer cans, hot wheels, G.I. Joe figures, Legos, etc… I collected comic books because they were cheap and I could actually read them after I bought them. Most collector items just sat after you added them to the collection, but I liked reading. As I got older, I collected books more and comics less. At some point, the books began taking up much more space than the comics.
Now that I’m older, I’ve known for a while that I can’t keep everything that I’ve accumulated over the decades. I don’t want to keel over one day and leave my family with a bunch of junk. My books aren’t “junk,” but you know what I mean. A part of me wants to go minimalist, to need nothing, to be able to pack all of my possessions into my car and go anywhere I want whenever I want. The other part of me likes my books. There aren’t that many places I want to go anyway, and even if I wanted to go to a bunch of places, I might not want to stay at any of them.
Some people say there’s little difference between collecting and hoarding. Both of are unnecccesary accumulations of stuff in your home. When people think of hoarding, that gathering is either of a valuable resource that people desperately need (toilet paper during a “shortage”) or it’s just a bunch of random stuff that takes up space and overwhelms anybody unfortunate enough to step inside. The collection, however, is more strategic. It usually has a theme and can be attached to the owner’s ego. A collector is often proud of his/her gathering of stuff. The hoarder is a cutthroat looking to make a profit or… or… I’m not sure what’s wrong with that other guy.
For me, the obsession is with books, and there are reasons I like to keep my stuff. If I got rid of everything to go in the minimalist direction, I’d have to rely on libraries for my books, but even the best libraries have a relatively small selection of books compared to what I can find online. If I’m just browsing, I can always find something unexpected and interesting, and that’s great, but if there’s something in particular I’m looking for, good luck! The library either doesn’t have it, or an insurmountable wait time gets in the way. Libraries can give you digital access, but that doesn’t get rid of potential wait times, and you still have to rely on tablets at a time when it’s obvious we should be getting less reliant on some technology.
Used book stores are awesome if you have access to them. You can buy books cheap, and they’ll buy the books back from you when you’re done, but you might feel ripped off when the store buys them back. If the used book store is going to sell them cheap, then they have to buy them cheaper, unless you want the store to shut down and the employees to NOT get paid. No matter what your hobby is, there’s some type of used store (or online dealers) who will be willing to rip you off. That’s another downside to collecting: you become more vulnerable to rip-off scams.
For a while it seemed like digital was a great format for book collecting. You could keep a bunch of books on a device without taking up space in your home. Unfortunately, if the company you buy the books from changes its terms of service (or goes out of business), you can lose access to the books. If the corporation wants to change the content of the book you already bought, it could do that too. If you want to truly own the book, you have to buy the physical copy. Some people don’t care about that, but if you like controversial books, you’d better buy yourself a physical copy.
Collecting is great if you like to read books more than once. I rarely read books in their entirety more than once, but I like to reread important scenes. To me, very few books are great from beginning-to-end. If a book has some great scenes with okay scenes in between, that’s good enough for me. Greatness is difficult to maintain over a long period of time (or a large number of pages). Some people like to rewatch scenes from movies. I like to reread scenes from books, and I don’t want to go running off to the library to go find a book that the library probably won’t have.
Now I collect stuff and then get rid of it. I still gather books that I like, but my collection is much smaller than it used to be, and I get rid of the stuff I won’t read again. This way I can still enjoy the hunt of collecting and seeing new stuff, and that stuff doesn’t accumulate and get in the way like it used to. I also check out a lot of books from the library, but I return them quickly, especially if I know I won’t finish them. If I decide to go all the way minimalist (I won’t), I can. My family no longer has to worry about a home filled with stuff, so if I keel over today, I’m not leaving a huge burden for my family. I mean, I don’t plan on keeling over today… but it’s probably going to happen somet…
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For more Dysfunctional Literacy, see…
Working Odd Jobs and Traveling to Quiet Places
The Introvert’s Guide To Protesting
Dysfunctional Literacy 