A Few of My Favorite Things: Obsessing Over Material Possessions

By Kathryn Lanza

A Few of My Favorite Things is an entertaining and light-hearted way of looking at society's obsession over material possessions. It uses a Material Possession Spectrum to rate people to their attachments from collecting to hoarding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257711505

Book preview

References

Introduction

Shopping. Saving. Collecting. Disorganization. Clutter. Hoarding. All things I considered tangible, but never looked beyond their meaning. It starts off as common acquiring, or buying things that you don’t necessarily need but feel compelled to buy. Things with collectible value. Then, some kind of attachment develops as a way of connection between the person and their objects. This can ultimately turn into a potentially serious problem that only until recently doctors and professionals have heard of: hoarding. It’s stuff. Why are we so attached to things?

I guess my journey of questioning tangibility started when I went with a friend to pick up their Aunt Claire in Boston. I was warmly welcomed, hugged, and pinched like any place I go that involves a little, old lady. Then my eyes wandered. Beyond the puff of powdery white Aunt Claire hair, my eyes feasted on more stuff than I had ever seen in a house...in my life. I instantly thought it just must have been a one time instance, and that Aunt Claire’s house wasn’t always like this. Sometimes we just get behind in our cleaning, you know? Of course, I didn’t say anything. I went out to lunch and went home and went to bed and lived my life. But I always held on to the image in the back of my mind: the stacks of toppling newspapers, the empty shampoo bottles in the shower, the piles of old Christmas and birthday cards, and the heaps of mail on the floor. And then I found myself trying to make my life comfortable while at college. Besides having two of everything, one for my home and one for my school apartment, I had more stuff than I knew what to do with. I bought things while I was living away to make myself feel more at home and comfortable. I would subconsciously think, Well, at least it’s not as bad as Aunt Claire.

I immediately thought that to tackle this topic of stuff, I would have to go to the extreme. I would have to make friends with a person who was so disorganized and coax them to tell me why. Wait a minute, that’s not how we’re supposed to make friends, is it? I ended up uncovering some people who had never given any thought to their stuff, but they had compelling stories and real life experiences. I thank those sources who have let me into their lives and those sources who have connected me to those people.

My sojourn for stuff started at a downtown shop in Burlington, Vt. called Junktiques. I met Dan, who not only just worked there, but considered himself a lifelong packrat. I considered collecting and buying to save the jumping off point. Then, I turned to hoarding. Well, not personally...but hoarding as an identification in this book for the most severe end of the topic. Little did I know that it would allow me to see inside the meaning of all the stuff I had literally and figuratively encountered. My new friend Brenda who considers herself a recovered hoarder, let me understand her connection to her things, and how she got there. And I am proud to say that there was no coaxing involved. She was a brave and self-proclaimed survivor of her stuff.

Suddenly, not only the stuff, but the information was pouring out right before my own eyes. I never thought I would have access to so many people who had experience with this topic. Mike Ohler, Transitional Housing Specialist for the Burlington Housing Authority, Burlington, Vt. said that he noticed ever since diving into this topic in his work, he has had more and more people come up to him and offer their own stories. Oh yea, now that I think of it, my great-grandfather could have been a hoarder, or I know someone who is like that.. I wondered why all of a sudden this thing, these things, were coming into our realm of acknowledgment just now?

The interviews in this book are a result of my insatiable appetite to uncover stories that you don’t hear on an everyday basis. And much to all of my journalism professors’dismay, I crave sensationalism. Maybe I wanted to hear about the quirks and weirdness of someone’s clutter, but I also established friendships and almost sympathetic relationships with my interview subjects. It doesn’t take someone with a mental health problem, or someone who has lived in public housing all their life to uncover a story about stuff. It took me time to realize that collecting and hoarding can be right in front of us and under our very noses, with our loved ones or even ourselves. Sorry Oprah, but I was a little annoyed with your one hour exploitation of hoarders when it takes a lifetime to understand. Let this in no way be a psychological, financial or legal service to those involved in the subject matter. It is a descriptive social and illustrative look at different people behind the status of their stuff, and a journey all in itself.

People and Their Possessions

Unless we set some concrete descriptions for identifying the different ranges of the possessions that people have, things will get messy. And just to clarify, there is no coined scientific term for stuff. It’s just stuff. Let’s start with your average day to day collector, someone who you wouldn’t consider to be overpowered by any means by their possessions. They go on vacation and go to the souvenir shop to get that magnet for their fridge. Collecting is a hobby that is undertaken with intent. It can be described as seeking out and locating, then organizing and storing or displaying the particular item. Some collecting is for leisure purposes, like the shot glasses, and some is collected with intent to gain value over an extended period of time. Some collectors make collect only in their childhood and others may choose to continue their collections for life.

Collecting

So this could be you, right? It can be anyone. I collected miniature clocks and timepieces growing up. It’s not that I really liked time, or even the concept of time for that matter, and I hated having to squint my eyes in order to make out exactly where the hour and minute hand were on their miniscule faces. I am actually not a very punctual person at all, which is pretty embarrassing for having over 20 clocks. But I can’t even explain why I collected them. I think it’s because I thought they looked cool, and though I don’t avidly seek out miniature clocks while shopping, I am not opposed to adding to my collection.

Collectors are significantly different than hoarders. Normally, collectors are proud of their possessions and they look forward to showing them off. A boy who collects baseball cards might be proud to show them off to his friends, or someone who collects the things that are considered the fad of the year show them off. Pogs? McDonald’s Happy Meal toys? Anything