We’ve all seen the pictures of the homes of the hoarders,
the out of control individuals swallowed by the mountains of garbage that they
have accumulated, but were unable to dispose of, teetering piles of rubbish
concealing walls that have not seen the light of day in years. We all agree that no, that’s not us, no way,
unh uh; just keep your nose out of my garage.
Some people are compulsive sorters, labelers and shelvers in
their attempts to bring their hoarding under control. My father was one such,
and I have inherited those tendencies, but I like to think they are under
control. When he passed on, I looked in
his garage and found shelves full of labeled compartmented trays for nuts, bolts,
screws, springs, washers, set screws, cotter pins, you name it. As a small boy I remember going to McLendon’s
with him every Saturday, and every time he needed one, he bought two, just in
case. I still regret sending the pop rivets off to auction.
Half the battle of collecting stuff is being able to lay
your hands on it when you need it, a battle that is lost when you spend hours
or days digging through your pile looking for something you knew you had, but
don’t quite remember where you put it.
With tools, it’s who you loaned them to.
Half the reward you get when you sell or give away some
little gubbin you’ve been sitting on all these years, like those clear yellowed
Lucite Stanley replacement plastic mallet tips in the original box that have
lived in my toolbox for twenty years or so, comes from the justification that
you were right, see? Let the significant
others of the world roll their eyes as they will, one successful placement of a
part back in the tool to which it belongs, or one new home found for the odd
Harley part, even if it means transportation from one pile to another, means
all the rest of them could do the same, right?
It’s even better when you make a profit on the deal!
Beyond that, though, we also benefit society when we scoop
up others’ discards and preserve them for the moment they regain their value. Each finished part represents a certain
amount of labor on someone’s part, which takes energy, which can neither be
lost nor destroyed as long as the part avoids the landfill or the smelter. The trick is in knowing where to draw the
line.
Every swap meet I ever attended as a seller always winds up
with the pack-up-and-head-for-the-barn load, and there is always a small pile
of stuff there that just doesn’t deserve to go back in my pile; I’m tired of
looking at it, and nobody is ever going to want that anyway, so where’s the
nearest garbage can? One of my favorite
tricks was to go to one of the other sellers and say, “Hey, I gotta go, but I
want to leave this pile here in my booth as freebies that anyone who wants can
take. Would you do me a favor and toss
the remainders in that garbage can over there for me when you leave?” They’d always say, “Sure, no problem!”, but
they’d also have that look on their face that said, “Yeah, sure, after I dig through
it first and see how much I want!”
Either way, the stuff would be gone and I’d be happy.
But the thing to remember is that everything you keep in
your house or garage has a story, and everything has a hook that latches on and
drags you down. Some things, like your
favorite motorcycle, have big hooks in deep while others, like the spare part
for a tool you no longer own, have small ones that are easily dislodged. When you pick up a thing and consider it, and can’t remember
where you got it and why you kept it, that’s a sign that you kept it too long,
or never needed it in the first place, and an invitation to send it on down the
road. The beauty of Ebay and Craigslist
and all their competitors is that they give people ways to get rid of stuff the
best way, by turning them into cash. The
problem is when you can’t quite figure out how to do that.
It is also true that, even if you give stuff away or send a
load to the scrap metal yard, it feels almost as good as if you had sold it,
because the hooks pulling out of your shoulders lighten your load an
infinitesimal but noticeable amount.
Giving something to a friend who needs it returns double the pleasure to
you as you do good and feel good about it.
That’s better than money.
We are marked by the things we collect as we become known by
them. Just let one Singing Bass show up
on your wall, and the avalanche of beer bongs, fishing plaquards, NASCAR
posters and cutesy country sayings on softwood is inevitable. It’s like clickbait on Facebook.
And then there’s the problem of what happens to your
collection after you die. That old saw
about “I want to live long enough to become a problem for my kids” takes its
meaning posthumously. The real difference,
I suspect, is that one departed person’s pile is dealt with by use of an
auctioneer, while another one requires a dumpster. It could be considered a measure of success
in your accumulation, an affirmation, if you will, of your judgement and discriminating
taste if the auction catalog is larger than the dump load.
So the wisdom nuggeted here, if any, is that collections are
nice, when they bring you pleasure and increase in value (hah!), but it is also
nice to thin them from time to time.
There was a guy, who made a good living hauling garbage in Portland for
many years and accumulated a collection of motorcycles, mostly Harleys, that he
rode for around 500 miles each before stashing them in his collection in
original unmolested condition. As you
can imagine, the auction when he died drew a lot of attention and brought many
high prices for the bikes when they sold.
You could also imagine the costs associated with storage of that many
bikes in a way to preserve them, and how that alone would force the heirs to
dispose of the collection, let alone the buildings that housed them. You can imagine what will happen to Jay Leno’s
Garage when he passes on.
There’s a collection of cars down in Punta Gorda, Florida, on display in a museum euphemistically called the Muscle Car Museum, even though it’s mostly GM cars, few Fords or Mopars. It’s one man’s collection that outlived him by becoming large enough to draw a crowd in its own right, like the LeMay Collection in South Tacoma.
There’s a collection of cars down in Punta Gorda, Florida, on display in a museum euphemistically called the Muscle Car Museum, even though it’s mostly GM cars, few Fords or Mopars. It’s one man’s collection that outlived him by becoming large enough to draw a crowd in its own right, like the LeMay Collection in South Tacoma.
But it’s probably safe to say that most of our collections
are not going to wind up in a museum. It’s
also probably safe to say that most of our collections are too large, and could
stand to be thinned a bit. I tell my
kids that, if they’re lucky, I’ll get the dump run done in advance. The rest is up to them. He who dies with the most toys wins, right?
