Stuff Collections Objects Possessions

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How many things do you own?

In the last 10 years I have accumulated a lot of stuff. I used to own very little, a suitcase of books, and another two cases or so of clothes and papers etc. I used to conduct ruthless throw-outs every year or so. I hated clutter. I could move everything I had in one taxi, almost on foot or by train.

But now I own mountains of clothes, a huge box of beautiful "covers/cloths", bookshelves of books, and at least a hundred DVDs, aswell as many drawerfuls of papers, pictures, posters, tapes, photos, letters, and several boxes worth of "ornaments" ( little pottery things, crystals, christmas decorations I'm fond of, bionicle creations, "found objects", oddments ), and it has just recently begun to "weigh" on me, even though, ( if I exclude furniture, bedding, etc ), it is only about a ( small ) roomful all together.

What place do objects have in your life?

How attached are you to them?

Are they "on display"/in use most of the time? Or are they hoarded, piled up, put away, unused, but somehow "precious"?

Do you collect "rubbish" ( empty boxes/bottles/tubs/pots/packets/wrappers etc )?

Do you have big, or small, "collections" of things? How many different collections?

Do you throw stuff out regularly, and/or exchange/trade-up? Or do you keep almost everything you have ever bought, found, or been given?

Have you always been the same way about possessions/objects?

Do your collections/possessions make you feel happy? Anxious? Burdened?
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Last edited by ouinon on 06 Dec 2009, 10:48 am, edited 3 times in total.

LOL-We should never be roommates. I have one quarter of my late step father's wood-shop full of overflow. I actually hate being this way but every time I try to do something about it I get overwhelmed with the task. My son has a lot of anxieties and doesn't like to sleep in his room alone-I moved him to the couch as a transition but then gradually started throwing stuff in there with the idea of getting it all cleared away and seeing if I couldn't move him in there. It is, no surprise, a nightmare. Part of my problem is I'd much rather donate than throw away but I never get around to lugging it down 3 flights of stairs. Salvation Army will pick up but I tend to have an all or nothing mindset so I want it all ready to go. I need to get over that.

Probably not! Maybe not even housemates by the sound of it, unless I found your stuff "interesting" anyway, either to look at or to use.


Have you always had a lot of things, or has it crept up on you? What sort of things do you collect/gather around you?

I agree about the donating. And also identify with the desire to get rid of it all at once, or not at all. I have small heaps of books stacked on several steps of the staircase now, and plastic bags of clothes jammed in corners, waiting for me to "finish" the job off by adding all the other things I really don't want or use and would like to free myself of, but so far can't ...

It's as if I have become scared of making a mistake; I have regretted many of my throw-outs in the past, of clothes, books, music tapes, my own writing, "souvenirs", letters from people, jewellery, etc, and now I hesitate. I think, well, while there's still space why not hang on to it all; I might need that, or that ... sometime.

But I didn't used to let that stop me in the past; I used to think that being streamlined, clutter-free, having the "space", etc was more important, so I am a bit puzzled really at collecting so much, and now, suddenly, aware of feeling rather suffocated by it all.


I can see how that would happen; a handy empty space to put things "temporarily". Eek!
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Last edited by ouinon on 06 Dec 2009, 11:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I accumulate books,clothes,things that are broken that I'm going to fix one day , magazines I'm going to read one day, cable cords and connectors, 1/2 used toiletry articles,boxes for when I get my act together and pack it up, A family quilt that's in terrible condition but it's a century old, A broken cuckoo clock,Royal Doulton china that belonged to my grandmother that I've never used,a box of old photographs and the empty albums to put them in,dvd's and vhs I never watch,kitchen utensils I never use etc etc.-clearly I have a problem. I also have boxes and boxes of papers that I'm not sure whether to keep-my son's old school stuff. Whew!

^ I forgot to mention pictures I'm going to frame one day. Notice a theme here? I'd frankly rather be staring off into space, which is what I do.

My sister does the same thing, stockpiles hundreds even thousands of newspapers and books that she intends to read ... sometime! I do that quite a bit with clothes; clothes that I think will be useful to have ... sometime! And even DVDs to some extent; wanting to own them so that if I ever want to watch them again they will be there, but many of which, however wonderful, I don't watch again.

And the broken stuff I do a bit too, with clothes that I might get round to adapting ... sometime. Aswell as art materials, etc, which I plan to use ... sometime! But like you I tend to prefer staring into space ...

So the problem "stuff" is not super beautiful cared-for collections of objects, ( which I do have, but which I don't think bother me so much; they're pretty small anyway ), but currently completely uninteresting/unusable things which "might" be useful or interesting at some point in the future. That's interesting. I wonder how many people's accumulations of objects are like that.

I'm just thinking that it is in fact the degree of non-use which is bothering me. A lot of stuff which is just sitting there, because I "thought" it might be useful, but don't get round to using it. That's the painful bit, the way the things are use-less in my possession.

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It occurs to me that it is the stuff which I have bought/collected/kept because of its ostensible usefulness, ( however much in the future ), that is causing the problem. Stuff I collected for its sheer beauty, or because it belongs to some "set" ( of data in particular ) that I already had parts of, ( for "special interest" reasons say ), is not weighing on me in the same way.

I wonder how many people collect/keep stuff for that reason, ( "usefulness" ) rather than because of a special interest/passion, or the beauty of something. Does it always lead to increasing clutter? Is there any way of controlling it? I once read that if you haven't worn a piece of clothing in a year, or is it two years, then it should be thrown out!

Does anyone else here "suffer" from this sort of "clutter" issue? And what about being overwhelmed by an ever-increasing collection of objects that never pretended would be useful?

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That's where most of my problem is although I have plenty of objects I like to look at.

Haha! Aimless, you just described my collection of stuff exactly! We recently moved and it has become such a burden to carry around all this junk. I have made a promise to myself that I will never move again. The next move will have to be my niece or nephew putting me into a nursing home and then hauling all my "stuff" off to the dump..........

Some stuff I keep because it's made better than the new stuff. It may look like hell but it doesn't fall apart.

That's one of my huge ones, along with music. But I also feel compelled to own a good (or even interesting ) film, even if it just gathers dust for years. Somebody interesting might come over someday, and I'd just have to make them watch it with me. Yeah, right. I'm going to have a visitor.


I can't help feeling though, that to a great extent my collections define me. Like if they all disappeared, I would cease to be me and be left just a blank, anonymous clone. I know I'd feel very lost and naked.

Thank you very much for posting that, because I have a feeling that may have something to do with why I am feeling a bit suffocated all of a sudden; I have never before in my whole life owned so many things, so many of them to do with my tastes/interests/identity/presentation.

The DVDs/films and books are the clearest examples of this change; I have loved films since I was a child, but until the last couple of years I didn't have, and couldn't afford, to own copies/DVDs of them. I love many books but until a few years ago I didn't own any apart from my ancient favourite children's books plus a very few classics of literature and non-fiction ones.

I think that the change might have something to do with the fact that I see so few people ( up close and frequently ) since moving to France 10 years ago, and this is how I "re-present" myself in the absence of people/community/workplace to do it with/at. Because I can't tell someone about such and such a film, etc I buy the DVD, to "bookmark" that experience.

Clothes ... I was about to say is a different matter ... but it's not ... I buy quite a lot of clothes that I rarely or never find the occasion to wear, but would love to if I did have more places to go, people to see.

Ummm. I am suffocating in the "potentially useful" and in "simulations/substitutions for acting more visibly/concretely in the world". Am I collecting things to make up for my lack of presence "out there"? Maybe. And as a consequence I might feel, as you say, naked/non-existent without them.

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I have several hundred books, a ton of knick-knacks, several dozen computer games, legos, computer, TV, DVD player, cable moden, about 3 dozen movies, 3 video game consoles, several dozen console games, and a bike.

I just watched an episode of Hoarders for the first time. This one woman had 8,000 pounds of debris removed from her home. They found two dead cats. They figured one of them had been buried under a pile of trash for 10 years. I'm nowhere near that bad but I am weighed down with a lot of crap I don't need and don't use. I should commit to taking one box a day to Goodwill. I think it's genetic. My father was a hoarder.

I am not sure how I should respond to this, so I said other. My house, itself, is an overflowing container for stuff... but it is not really my stuff. I think back to the apartment that I had before my husband and I lived together... My books, clothing, cds, and photo album could have fit easily into two boxes. Easily. My husband, however, is one of those hoarder types, so my house is packed full of stuff. It used to drive me insane. It still does to a lesser degree. His ocd drives him to keep everything, mine drives me to rid of everything every four months. I have to settle for stuffing his stuff in boxes and lugging them to the basement so when he needs to dig out something like a magazine he and his classmates made in 6th grade, or to look at the hide box Sohpie out grew last year, he can. I do not understand keeping things like that. I find stuff to be extremely stressful. The more I have, the more I have to do to keep on top of it, and if and when I slide on keeping up on it (which I always do) the mess creates a mess in my head. It is too much chaos for me just dealing with his stuff most days. I find it all very overwhelming.

Well, that's what I'm wondering; whether this sort of behaviour is genetic, and/or related to AS, ( perhaps part of the "rituals" or "objects" criteria? ).

My sister is even worse than I am. With her it's mainly second-hand clothes, ( which I have hoarded in the past, now it's new ones ), newspapers, books, and empty jars/pots etc. And my 10 year old AS/PDD son has for years now collected what seems to me like "rubbish"; tickets, wrappers, empty packets, odd bits of paper, aswell as cartoon magazines, old toys however poor quality, etc etc etc. My father hoards books by the thousand, and my mother hoards kitchen equipment and empty jars/pots etc, aswell as papers.

I used to be the odd one out in my family, with my "no clutter" approach, but in the last 5-10 years I have begun to hoard too.

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