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Originally Posted by noisereductions

My wife kind of said what you did Tesla. I'm not a hoarder, not spending money I shouldn't. I think it's just something that bothers me sometimes that I feel a need to collect anything.

the question though is DO YOU USE IT? if you have use for it and actually use it (not “i might need this torn blanket some day”) then it’s totally valid. e.g. i have several types of coffeemaker and i use them all regularly. there isn’t one that sits there in the back of a shelf. they all “work” and serve a function. it’s not a “collection” that “represents’ anything it’s just tools i use.

some collecting is interesting/good/useful in the sense that it provides hard to find information about a particular interest, like, say, fossils, or meteorite samples, or (yes yes) books. many museums have started as private collections.

but there is a difference between a collection that’s like a little museum and a pile of stuff that sits unused in a drawer taking up space and you “have it”.

like that vegas casino guy who keeps these van gogh paintings locked up in his vault. what is the point of that. “i have it”. so? but anyway...

the only art collector i find respectable was dr. barnes who made it with a purpose and studied it and whose collection got stolen by the city of philadelphia after he died. it was a huge teaching tool for artists and historians and it got broken up in the name of tourism.

anyway there was this documentary years ago about this old man who spends his life collecting records. he claims these are important to the history of civilization and what not. he says he’s spent his life earnings on them and they’re worth 4 million bucks or something.

now he’s old and can’t pay for the storage where he keeps them and he’s going blind or something (i recall vaguely). and wants his 4 million bucks! but the market is only willing to give him 50 grand because that’s what it’s worth.

the documentary does not understand markets and therefore takes the side of the old blind man, to no avail. reality is what it is in spite of wishful thinking. those records are a big chunk of nostalgia that require a lot of labor and nothing more. what the old man paid through his life does not matter.

anyway there’s a fine line between collecting and hoarding, and i got rid of my hoard when i realized i didnt need to have special furniture and real estate for reading materials that i a) did not need immediately at hand, and b) could get elsewhere. i’m all about donating books now instead of keeping them. circulation is a good thing.

i suppose with music it’s the same thing. used to be you HAD TO have records and tapes if you wanted to listen to music that wasn’t on the radio. so record collections were important. but technologies have changed. all the music i need fits into my pocket.

everyone is different, but for me form follows function, so if there’s no function for it... i say thanks and goodbye to my old friends and send them out into the world. that way i can function better and have more free time actually. and free space! and with less furniture, moving house for a better job or a better life is a piece of cake. so many pluses. there’s a huge sense of freedom not being weighted down or having to clean shit.

plus, things are not people, so, for example, i don’t need my grandfather’s relics to remember him.

things are not people. i think that’s a good one to remember because we often feel like discarding object is like throwing away people. it’s not. things are not people. things are not people.