I am a horder. There. I’ve said it. Admitting it is the first step to healing, right? No, I’m not one of those people who would be on the TV show. But, I do tend to keep stuff for quite a while. Really I like to think of myself as a collector.
I still have the gym bag I made in home economics in 8th grade. I haven’t sewn anything since then. I have my first teddy bear. It is mint green and white. It was in pretty good condition until I was in junior high. That’s when a kid my mother babysat pulled the eyes off of it. I was heartbroken.
I have my first baby shoes. I have the dress I was married in. And the shoes. I’m a bit of a shoe freak and probably have 300 pairs. My husband is turning a bedroom into a closet for me. I’m planning to make the walk-in closet in the master bedroom into my shoe and purse closet. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.
I have boxes and boxes of old photographs. Have no plans to digitize them all but it’d be a great project. Now I have thousands of pictures on the cloud even though I have no idea what or where that actually is.
I have every college textbook I ever purchased….always new because I was spending my parents money and I liked to mark them up myself. I still have a copy all the articles from my dissertation literature review and the 18 cassette tapes that hold the interview data on them. Wish I knew the addresses to the families of the lovely women I interviewed. They’d make perfectly good oral histories. I’ll bet they’d like to hear their voices again.
I have probably ten Christmas trees from size tiny to large. And boxes and boxes of ornaments. Every one of them has a story and I’d be happy to tell them all to you someday. Hmmmm. Maybe that’ll be a nice holiday post long about December.
I have stuff, stuff, and more stuff. I like my stuff.
I don’t know what is to become of all this stuff. Every time my husband suggests downsizing and moving, I balk at the idea. I say the best way to get back at our kids and grand kids is to die in our present home and leave everything to them. Imagine the stuff I can accumulate for them in the next 40 years! Fortunately my genes are made of good stuff and I plan to live a very, very long time. Me and my stuff.
dmzh
Tower of Twins 
I believe I have the same issue. However, I live in an apartment. Kind of like putting a tree in a small pot. Not too much room to grow. Sparking of trees, it would be great to hear stories behind your Christmas trees.
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Thanks, Blake. Yes, I lived in apts. for many years. In one I had a giant closet under the stairwell. It’s amazing how much stuff I stuffed in there. I WILL tell some stories about trees and ornaments later this year!
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When I got married, I lived in a 1-bedroom apartment with a den. My wife-to-be and her son lived in a 2-bedroom house with a full basement. I needed a larger truck to move my things into our house than she did.
Yeah, I hung on to stuff.
When the marriage ended, for various reasons I sold, gave away, or lost; or my ex simply kept against my wishes; almost everything I owned. I got my clothes, some papers, a few kitchen gadgets, a futon, and a bunch of end tables. Everything else was gone.
I was astonished, just flattened, to find that I missed almost none of it. Not my records (you know, vinyl), not most of my camera collection, not the shelves full of books (even the ones with my name on the spine), not the knick-knacks, not all the letters from friends, not hardly any of it. It was great to travel so light.
Now, going on 10 years later, I’ve accumulated a bunch of stuff again. Not the same as before, but a fair amount just the same, and I’m itching to divest, so that I can feel that freedom again.
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Hi Jim. I don’t know why I’m so attached to stuff. The huge F in my personality type I’m sure has something to do with it. But both my parents hung on to stuff too, so maybe somewhat genetic. We have a big house with a full basement and garage and lots of out buildings on our property….all filled with stuff. I’m serious about just leaving it all to the kids and grandkids to throw away. After I’m dead I just won’t care!
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My mom and dad moved out of their house of 38 years last year and it took Mom 2 full years to get rid of all the stuff she had squirreled away. So I get the genetic link.
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