Confessions of a Collector

My friend David started the first phase of an "estate sale" this weekend, thinning out his massive collection of approximately 40 years of pop culture treasures.  My friend Cathy has decided it's time to purge her home of the "stuff" she's amassed over the years.  Is something in the air?  Have people been watching too many episodes of Hoarders?

David quotes Lao Tzu, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  Certainly, there's a percentage of people who feel that material goods hold them back and getting rid of their belongings is liberating.  I don't disagree, but is it possible for some people to have a healthy, non-restricting relationship with their "things"?

I've been collecting since I was a child.  My bedroom dresser drawers and cabinets were filled, not only with clothes, but also comic books, magazines, toys and trading cards.  I'm the only person I know who as a teenager had a filing cabinet in his closet to store newspaper clippings of celebrity articles and movie reviews.  Does this sound abnormal?  I made straight-As in high school, never drank or did drugs, and had a close circle of friends.  That seems more abnormal to me.

My mother enabled me.  On one trip to find Wacky Packages at a 7-11, she asked me why I didn't just buy the entire box instead of collecting the individual packages.  That way, she said, I would be sure to have the entire set.  (However, she also reminded me how quickly it could all disappear, once throwing a Farrah Fawcett-Majors poster out the car window because I would not stop bothering my little brother and sister by poking them with it.)

The fact is, I've always enjoyed collecting.  Not just having things, but organizing them.  The physical process of putting comic books into bags or trading cards into plastic sleeves is relaxing for me.  I love cataloguing everything, whether it be in the form of a handwritten, typed or computerized list.  The only thing I ever did on the Commodore computer in my mother's sewing room was make a catalogue of all our Betamax movies and tapes.  Today, I enjoy nothing more than discovering a new way to track a collection, even if it requires entering everything one more time.

Magazines & Comic Books

When that happens, I get to look at everything again.  Right now, I'm working on my comic book collection for some articles I want to write.  Every book that moves through my hands brings back a memory.  I'll never have time to go back and read all of them, but that doesn't matter.  I know that I have them in case I want to go back and read them.  (That's the same reason I have so many movies: I may not watch them, much less ever unwrap them, but when the mood strikes me, they'll be there.)

I sometimes tell myself that if I'm ever bedridden or have absolutely no money, I'll have all these things to entertain me and will want for nothing.  I secretly hope that if I'm ever alone and in a nursing home, I'll have enough of my wits about me to enjoy everything one last time.

Does any of this sound unhealthy to you?  If so, let me assure you that my collections don't run my life.  I work 40 hours a week, have a loving partner and an active family and social life.  Collecting is my hobby and my therapy.  It gives me something to always anticipate, because there's always something new.

My father and I had a joke when I was growing up.  I would justify a new item by saying to him, "But, Dad, it's going to be a collector's item!"  For a long time, I told myself that all my collections were an investment in the future.  Truly, I have some items that are worth "something" today, but I believe two things about selling them:

1) They're only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay for them, and

2) They're only worth something if or when I ever decide to sell them.

From time to time, I have sold parts of my collection.  But you know, I never really sold them for what they were worth; to me, anyway.  And for every set of men's magazines I sell on eBay, I'm simultaneously regretting that instead of keeping an entire magazine from another set, I simply tore out the article and placed it inside the removed cover and filed it, throwing what was left into the trash.

It may sound like I live in a cluttered house among stacks and stacks of boxes, barely able to navigate the narrow hallways.  While I do have many boxes in the basement, I can assure you that there are no animals, living or dead, buried beneath them.  (Neither do I have a room for performing "surgery" on my dolls.)  Unless you enter my office, you probably wouldn't even know I'm a collector.  And I've never had so many boxes that I couldn't physically take them with me when I moved (counting four years of college as one time, I've moved at least 11 times since 1981).

My Library

I sometimes regret that I don't have an area to display my collections; my friend David had a "toy room" for a lot of his.  But some day, we might upgrade to a larger house with an extra bedroom and I have some fabulous ideas for turning it into my museum.  For now, my items will have to rest comfortably in their cardboard boxes, coming out for air as I occasionally make a new list and transport them to a newer, sturdier plastic box.

Boxes Needing Reorganization

The biggest regret about my collection is that it mirrors the aimlessness of much of my life.  I've written before that I'm a jack of all trades, master of none.  So is my collection.  I have a little bit of everything.  I sometimes wonder if I had decided I really, really liked one or two things, I could have gone about collecting everything for those one or two things.  Instead, I have a little Star Trek, a little Star Wars, a little Charlie's Angels, etc.  Partial collections are probably not worth as much as complete ones, except to me, of course.

A lot of people and things in my life give me joy; my collections are just one of them.  Although aspects of what you've read may sound scary, I do not believe I could technically be considered a hoarder.  A&E is not going to be filming at my house and there's no need for an intervention.  I'm not doing myself or anyone else harm.  I'll let other people have their epiphanies and do what they need to do to be happy.  For now, I actually think I'm good.  My only purging will be these thoughts as I unashamedly attempt to express them.