This is the
last entry you can comment on for the month of April.
Does the
author just use her (future) children as an excuse to hoard? Are you a hoarder? On the other hand, have
you ever regretted throwing something out?
How important is it to keep objects in order to keep a connection to our
past? Does a wealthy capitalist culture
tend to encourage throwing away things to buy new ones, or does it tend to encourage
hoarding by promoting the purchase of more space?
I am glad that this article highlighted a different type of hoarding that I am used to. Whenever I hear the word ‘hoard/ing’ or reminisce of the ‘Hoarders’ TV series, I imagine these completely trashed disgusting apartments which look like junkyards. However, the author of this article is much more organized than that - claiming she neatly stores and categorizes everything into piles of boxes which she then puts in her garage. I feel like the problem here is not that it is messy, more the amount of boxes and what she decided to save. I get it, items with sentimental value are irreplaceable, and hard to give up despite not being useful to your current way of living whatsoever. You should definitely keep your childhood photos, whether you decide to digitize them or keep them analog, but there is a big difference between that and your college essays or old newspapers.
ReplyDeleteThis issue is quite relevant in my life right now too, as I have been trying to clean out our garage and get rid of anything that has no use for us anymore. While I could agree on most things with my parents (empty cardboard boxes, other packaging), they would not budge when it came to things like old, torn trainers. They always say things along the lines of “what if we need it in the future…? you’ll be happy you kept them” - but of course, we never actually do. I do not consider us hoarders by any means - we give away most of our old clothes or pass them down and try to not keep a lot of things around, so this is a bit of an anomaly. Maybe I will get it one day, but for now it remains a mystery.
I am on the opposite side of the ‘hoarding’ spectrum as the author, as I try to live a pretty minimal lifestyle, and if it was my choice, my closet would be half the size it is currently. I prefer investing into fewer things, whether it be clothing or electronics, which are of higher quality, universal, and last longer. We need to realize that we do not need a lot of items around to be happy or survive another day without major inconveniences, as ultimately that should be the main purpose of why we have them in the first place.
- Martin
Hoarding is a habit that I believe I do possess to a certain extent. It is a lot less disruptive than psychological hoarding disorders as well as much less apparent than what the author deals with, but my habits have their own set of problems that they create. As opposed to the author, I am completely willing to throw out notebooks as soon as I fill them out and I happily give clothes that are too small for me to wear to other family members or charities without any hesitation. Thus I almost never deal with running out of space in my document folders or my wardrobe. The kind of problem that I deal with day to day is running out of disk space. Hard drives on both my phone and my laptop are constantly running out of space, signaling me that I should get rid of some large unused files. However, I am incredibly reluctant to actually do so.
ReplyDeleteMy unwillingness to delete files is fueled by the reasons that hoarders cite for their habits. The most common reason attributed to difficulty discarding one’s possessions is the emotional connection their owner establishes with them. There is a sense that these things will have a great use at some undefined point in the future, or that they are too integral to their lives to just put them away. I experience similar feelings when my hard drive becomes completely filled up and it comes to getting rid of old video recordings, music or software from my electronic devices. 95% of the time, I could never imagine looking at these files in 20 years’ time and being glad that I kept them, but I still hesitate to put them in the trash can. After all, the bigger a file is, the more important I perceive it to be. In addition, I have over 400 liked songs on Spotify, and I am sure that at least half of them I skip when they come on. Rationally, my disk space would benefit largely if I went ahead and got rid of unused files, but my emotional connection to them is too strong.
I find it quite intriguing to hear that you think that the bigger a file is, the more important it is. It definitely does sound pretty straightforward, and dare I say reasonable, but I have never even considered an excessive size of an object/file influencing my attachment to it. I’d even argue that the opposite is true for me! After all, if something is compact and doesn’t require a great deal of space to carry it around it makes it a lot easier for a person to be carrying a gazillion of those units all at the same time. Maybe it’s just me, but I guess it’s the little things that matter to me when it comes down to it.
DeleteOn a different note, I think that your example of “hoarding” of computer files, which I think is quite common among people, may not be an issue as big as the question of environmental sustainability which comes with the overabundance of tangible objects but an important problem nonetheless. Especially with humanity depending more on computers, digital data and whatnot. Of course, having cluttered personal computers might not be a huge issue for a community as a whole, but I think that this habit might easily stick around and cause greater mayhem in multipersonnel workspaces that require organization and a seamless stream of information in the computer files that those people share. Thus, I implore you Dalibor, seek help and not only will your quality of life improve, but people in your community might feel its positive consequences too.
Lucas
Nostalgia is definitely a double edged sword. It can be very calming to engage in a little bit of escapism, and reminisce about the good old days. As my life goes on, I find myself doing this more and more. There’s just this insane pull to the past that I can’t describe, especially to my childhood. Replaying a video game I beat as a kid, rewatching a movie I bonded over with my dad, binging a show I used to love, or rereading “Harry Potter” for the thousandth time - all of these suck me right into the past, making me forget the present. I’m not embarrassed to admit that this is one of my favorite pastimes. Maybe it’s because I want to go back to a simpler time, where the world wasn’t so complicated, or maybe I just remember a glorified version of everything.
ReplyDeleteIn this respect, I heavily relate to Jillian Pretzel, in that I’m kind of afraid of forgetting my cherished memories as I grow old. I also have trouble letting go sometimes. As a kid, I used to have a massive pile of various paper contraptions I had made when we had free time in kindergarten - I bawled my eyes out when we moved and had to throw it out. I also used to keep pet beetles - same story when they had to be released. Although I was sad at first, I’m grateful my parents forced me to throw out that pile of junk. It’s important to have the skill of letting some things go, because we can’t control everything in life.
This concerns our cherished “objects” from the past as well. I think that this is the main problem hoarders have. From my experience, the train of thought against throwing out some piece of junk is typically something like: “it can still be used in “x” very specific scenario” or “it's from bla bla bla”. At some point you just become hung up on hypotheticals and can’t move on from there.
This ties back to why nostalgia can be a double edged sword. It can be very enriching to delve into the past, but at some point it can become too much. If we focus on our old memories too much, we become unable to create new ones, unable to live our life. I love the feeling of nostalgia, but as with everything, balance is necessary. Cherish and protect your childhood teddy bear, and remember what it was like playing as a kid, so that you don’t become bitter when you get old. But by all means, I think you should throw out that plastic friendship bracelet from someone you don’t even remember.
Teo
Hello Filip,
DeleteAlthough you only briefly mentioned it, I think you raised one very interesting point. “Even though you cannot pin down which items have more value to you, some of them are more valuable to you than others.” - I think that this sentence describes hoarding perfectly. Once you get to the point of hoarding almost everything, you sort of lose the ability to distinguish that which is truly sentimental. I think most “hoarders” lack the ability to rank the importance of these objects, so they end up just keeping everything. So with this I think you hit the nail on the head.
When faced with two choices, both of which seem to be equally good, we tend to have trouble deciding. From my perspective, it doesn’t only feel like we are choosing one option, but also discarding the other. Personally, when I run into this issue, I’ve developed quite a good method of solving it. What I like to do is just flip a coin. If I like the outcome, I simply choose the option associated with it. However, even if I don’t, I then know that I wanted the other option all along.
It’s also interesting to me how you comment on sort of the logistic issues of hoarding. You might need to buy a storage unit, all those boxes take up a lot of space, and you also have to drag them along with you every time you want to move. In general it’s very exhausting, and I think it would make your lifestyle a lot more stationary. I guess this supports my point that hoarding is really about being stuck in the past. You are both literally and figuratively dragging your past with you. As you said, this creates even more problems in the present. This whole article kind of opened my eyes on how important it is to truly, fully live in the moment whenever you can.
Teo
To certain extent I feel like I can relate with the author’s desire to collect her possessions. I myself keep a lot of things from my past. It is usually not because of some sentimental reasons, but rather a feeling, that I would need that certain object sometime in the future. Whether it is a nice bag or box, in which I could pack something or an old notebook from the ninth grade. Because you never know when will your past notes come in handy. Even though I hardly ever need to dig into my collection of notes, there have been times when it all paid off. For example, when my younger sister needed help with some German vocabulary, I magically pulled out my old notebook, that I kept even though I am not learning German anymore.
ReplyDeleteFrom time to time I go through all my stuff and as the author, I also realize that a “good portion of my stored possessions is, indeed, just junk”. Unorganized papers with articles torn out of context, old filled out exercise sheets and notebooks full of tiny scribbles piling in my drawers. They all have to go. I think I have never regretted throwing something out. I just feel a bit guilty when seeing how much waste I am creating.
Today’s culture is pushing us to buy more and more. To constantly replace products with cheap newer versions, essentially, producing waste. So, from the standpoint of achieving greater sustainably, saving things for future seems reasonable, if not taken to extreme measures.