It’s complicated.
tl;dr incoming…
I don’t think I’m a hoarder, in that I am fairly controlled about the things that I actively bring into the house. And I’m not particularly a collector, in that I don’t actively seek to create sets of stuff. Think I’m more of an archivist. The stuff I have is pretty organised/compartmentalised. Throwing stuff out is a real struggle.
That should all be in the past tense, really. Over the past couple or three years I’ve gone through a fairly comprehensive decluttering of stuff that had been allowed to accumulate whilst staying at one address for ten years. Clothes and magazines/books were/are probably the two main culprits. Latterly, entirely unread mags/books.
Have properly streamlined my wardrobe down to sensible levels now. It wasn’t that I bought many clothes before, just that I had almost never thrown any clothes out over a twenty year period. Underwear included. Had ended up with nigh-on 100 pairs of pants and socks. Ridiculous. But there you go. It’s amazing what you can squirrel away when you’ve not moved home for a bit.
Still have boxes of magazines from my youth and twenties, many that had been stored at my folks’ home for a while, until they made their way back to me. I’ve recently mentally detached myself from the notion of keeping them, but haven’t yet rehomed them.
And that’s the first part of the problem. I hate waste in general, in this case specifically the idea that an object’s full utility has not been exploited. I know someone out there would find value, however small, in those magazines. And while that’s the belief, they’re not getting binned and recycled.
I think a second part of the problem is I’ve a fear of not remembering stuff. And objects are a tangible shortcut to memories. Now that digital photography is second nature, the way to beat this is to take a photo of the thing before getting rid. A big barrier removed, that.
Thirdly, there’s a financial security thing. I didn’t grow up with it. And, until recently, had never had it. It’s not that I ever thought my things were worth anything in monetary terms such that they could get me out of financial difficulty by selling them, just that there was never any certainty that replacing them with new versions was going to be possible. So I (over?)valued what I had.
But, yeah, this is mostly a part tense story, rather than a current issue. Things now are a world away from where they were five or so years ago. The urges are unlikely to ever go away, but after the big clear-out I’ve ‘broken the seal’ and (klaxon! - as a result of fatherhood) give way less of a shit about physical possessions now.
(As hinted at upthread, people with next to no possessions are unnerving. How is it possible to be so clinically efficient at disposing of the stuff that inevitably just… accumulates almost naturally, of its own accord?)
