Keeping It Going

Collecting versus hoarding

Collecting: Possessions are part of a larger set of items. Display does not impede active living areas in home.

Hoarding: Possessions become unorganised piles preventing rooms from being used for their intended purpose.

I’ve thought a lot about the difference between collecting and hoarding over the years. It matters to me that I’m a collector, not a hoarder. Hoarding’s associated with being a ‘bad thing’ and NHS UK even has it listed as a ‘disorder.’ A lot of what I’ve read on the NHS website about what constitutes a hoarder resonates, however and I’m struck by what a fine line there is between collecting and hoarding.

There are many excellent articles on the subject – for example, a paper published by the University of Texas, Austin: ‘From Passion to Problem: How to Prevent Collecting Becoming Hoarding.’

The paper has much to say about the importance of careful selection of objects – ‘mindful collecting’ as they refer to it:

‘Mindful collecting means making each acquisition a deliberate choice rather than an impulsive or compulsive action. It involves asking yourself questions like: “Do I truly need this item?”, “Does it add meaningful value to my collection?” or “Am I acquiring this for the right reasons?”. Evaluate each piece based on its significance, uniqueness, and alignment with your collection’s goals. This level of mindfulness helps in maintaining a collection that is not merely about the quantity of items but more about their quality and significance.’

The above paragraph resonates strongly for me as I recognise many of the questions I ask myself before obtaining or purchasing anything new. Over the years, I’ve become more discerning about the stuff I hold onto and as I’ve gradually decreased the volume of it, I’ve felt less guilty and okay about the amount of things I’ve collected. What I’m left with isn’t random – every object’s been carefully thought about, with a conscious choice made about the retention of each individual item: does it stay or does it go?

I’ve written a lot here about many of the objects I’ve collected over the years – much of it in relation to the strong memories and emotions many of the items stir up, but also, in terms of the actual physical space it takes up. Collecting and holding onto stuff always has consequences in terms of needing to make space to accommodate it – and that space costs money. I’ve been feeling more freed up since the huge cull I had when I moved house three years ago, closely followed by a move to a smaller studio. I radically reduced the amount of stuff to the extent that it now fits in two places – my garden shed, primarily, and some of it in my current studio.

I’m so relieved to no longer be paying rent for a commercial storage unit, which I did in the early part of my house move. It made me feel guilty, paying out money to store stuff that I didn’t necessarily need/want any more. The stuff I’ve had in storage over the years has ostensibly provided the bulk of the raw material for the work I make – and so, I always felt able to justify it. But other things crept in; I wasn’t always on the ball and though I’m by no means anywhere near putting together a full inventory of my collections, I’m more organised than I’ve ever been. I’ve learned to embrace the objects I’ve held onto and I’m happy that I can still put my hand to some real gems from the boxes in the shed and studio.

Today’s been a typical Bank Holiday Monday weather-wise, with continuous rain falling pretty much all day. I postponed plans to do some gardening and instead, focused on my creative work – and specifically, this blog.

It’s great to have over ten years of blog posts to reflect on, seeking out consistency and regularity in terms of the various themes in my work and stumbling across posts that still resonate after many years.

I’m reposting a blog entry I came across this morning – one from 2014, which after 10 years, resonates strongly still and sums up so much of my recent thinking: the passing of time, ageing and the changes, both physically and mentally, we go through as we become older. This potentially – perhaps, inevitably – has an impact on the work we make. It feels significant that the blog post in question, was written on the eve of my birthday, exactly 10 years ago, when I was in my 50s. A decade on and issues raised then are just as relevant today, if not more so:

April 11th 2014:

There’s a strong parallel between the ageing process I wrote about in my last post and these past few days’ ongoing finds in the boxes. It’s all about history and the passing of time; so much personal history and by association, so much political, social and cultural comment contained within the objects I’m bringing out of storage.

It’s over twenty years since a lot of them were packed away; life has moved on in all sorts of ways and I have changed. How relevant are these things to me? Here, right now, in the present? How much am I able to let go?

I wrote about the items of clothing and assorted accessories in my last post – those which, in all senses of the word, just don’t fit any more. Did I really have such a small waist! Did my feet really fit into those 1950s suede stilettos? Hard answers to come to terms with in many ways, and in any case, any amount of acceptance doesn’t necessarily make things more palatable.

The items in storage have become representative of the ageing process – they’ve aged and so have I, as well as the people around me – it’s an inevitable (but not necessarily welcomed) fact of life. And there’s that fine line again – between life and death and the fragility of human existence. Loved ones might die and yet, their clothing and personal effects still remain.

Similar feelings are stirred up by a lot of the other items making up my collections – books, photos, ceramics, letters and all their associative memories. It’s the objects as emotional containers that interests me most. After all, it’s the emotional attachment I’ve formed with the collections that’s responsible for them still being around me. Something drove me to keep certain things, just as something is telling me that now is the right time to detach myself from a lot of them – to shed some of the past, to retain the very ‘best’ of what I own and consequently, to lighten the load – to focus instead on the present and the future.

But not without some careful consideration – it’s much harder, emotionally to part with things than it appears on the surface. William Morris said :

‘Have nothing (in your house) that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’

It’s a tall order, especially if you’re prone to seeing beauty in just about everything – and the more broken, weathered and beaten up, the greater the appeal for me.

Since the frenetic sorting of the past few weeks has calmed down, I’ve had time and space to think about the very act of collecting – what it’s meant to me over the years and what it means now. One of the positive aspects of ageing is that sense of ‘knowing’ yourself – I don’t feel I need the paraphernalia around me to define who I am as I did in my student days, for example – the CND and feminist posters that let people know which side I was on as soon as they walked into my home. I’ve experienced moments of real excitement, reacquainting myself with blasts from the past, to moments of sadness about the fast pace at which life is passing me by.

My collections define me in terms of my age and my place in the world – you have to be a certain age for Sandy (in his wheelchair) David (in his cravat) and Benny in his hat to mean anything to you. Re-finding The Crossroads Motel jigsaw puzzle is a good example of finding something that excites, amuses and brings memories of my teenage/student years flooding back. But it also raises the question of what to do with a lot of these re-found items. Yes, the puzzle depicting all the Motel’s best-loved characters is amusing – it’s retro and it’s probably quite unique. But it’s also a classic example of something I really don’t know what to do with. Maybe that’s the title of my next piece of work: ‘Things I Really Don’t Know What To Do With.’