Newspaper Stacks and Other Hoards

 Photo of the living room of a compulsive hoarder --not mine though
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   

      I confess that I am a pack rat.  I haven't reached the stage of the hoarders you see on television or the reclusive oddballs who have been found dead, buried by toppled stacks of accumulated junk.  Not yet at least.  But my wife has her fears.

          Actually I have gotten better as I have attempted to pursue a goal of getting rid of something every day.  I do try.  Really.  I'll admit that new things get added on a regular basis, but so do the outgoing things.  Well, maybe I've slacked off of late, but my intentions are good.

          Stuff piles up.  Even when I was on the road with a touring stage production I tended to accumulate stuff.  If I hadn't have had my own vehicle during those years, my collection of material things accumulated during those travels would have been undoubtedly far less.  When I have a place to put things, I am apt to keep more. At the end of each tour year we'd empty our van to store stuff wherever we'd be provided space.  In most cases that would have been my parents house.  They had a lot of space even though they too managed to store a lot of stuff.

          Part of my pack rat nature probably came from my parents.  They were not "hoarders" in the absurd extreme sense of the word, but like most people they kept things.  Some things just accumulated because they rarely got sifted through while many others were kept for sentimental reasons, family history, or just because they seemed worth keeping.

          After my mother's passing I can't say any of us were amazed or even mildly surprised by all the stuff that was in her house because it was stuff that we often saw when we were there.  There were times when, with my mother's blessing, I'd undertake a mission of sorting, organizing, and weeding out.  That helped some, but still that daily incoming flow of stuff typically outweighed the stuff going out.

         In my own home I've had some energetic bursts of stuff removal with items being sold, donated, or thrown away.  This can be tiring and for me it is often a mission that digresses into diversionary exploration and study of what I have in our home's possession.   Memories are often stirred as well as the puzzling pondering of "why did I keep this" or "where the heck did this come from".

          My stacks of newspapers have dwindled considerably as I've cut back my subscription to just a Sunday paper.  I've been slowly going through the accumulations of old newspapers and moving them to the recycling bin.  I've had a thing about newspapers since I was in high school when I felt compelled to read every word, study every picture, and look at every advertisement--an undertaking that seemed to never gain ground as stacks became higher and higher.

         This never seeming to get ahead of the stuff accumulation is what leads to a purging now and then.  My frustration with not reaching my objectives of wading through the stuff that piles up will sometimes spur me to start eliminating things as quickly as I can.  Or I'll sort things into piles, storage spaces, or boxes in order to create some semblance of neatness until I can get to it all later.

          So it goes.  Stuff comes in while some of it goes out.  What doesn't go out becomes set aside for someday.   I suppose that one day after I have passed from this life there will be stuff for whoever I leave behind.  They will sort through it all in wonderment or perhaps even disgust.  I've got some pretty cool things tucked away.  I wonder if they will recognize that?

           Now excuse me while I carry another load of stuff off to the recycle bin.   Not all of this stuff is all that cool.

           Do you find yourself in a never-ending battle with accumulation?   What kinds of stuff do you tend to keep?    When do you throw something away?

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Closets: What's In Yours?

A wall closet in a residential house in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Picture of inside a closet by Matthew Paul Argall  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         The houses I lived in when I was growing up didn't have very big closets.  Older houses as a rule have smaller sized closets.  At least that's the way it is with the closets in the older houses I've seen.

         My maternal grandparents didn't even have closets in the bedrooms of their large house that was built in 1909.  My mother says that there was a closet in the hallway where she hung up clothes.  I don't recall ever seeing that closet, but then again I guess I wasn't looking for a closet when I would visit there.

        A Nolo Law site article offers that older homes did not have many closets because houses were taxed according to the number of rooms and closets were considered to be rooms.  Other sources dispute this idea, but I think it seems like a rather reasonable explanation.   This is also probably why the large pieces of furniture known as armoires or wardrobes were used instead.  Of course these large pieces of furniture date back many centuries.

        The concept of built in closets may have also presented construction problems in some of the palaces and mansions prior to 18th century.  An ornate piece of furniture would have been more of an attractive storage solution than a door in the wall leading to a dark little alcove.  Rooms were larger in those homes of the elite and wealthy and they could easily accommodate a large wardrobe cabinet.

       Closets are certainly more practical in an age of electrically lit rooms where the inner recesses are more well illuminated.   A closet in a small room lit by candle or gaslight could be a gloomy little place where things might be difficult to find.   When we take into consideration the greater mobility of modern families we can see the problem of moving an armoire from one house to another.  Most people who had a big house didn't move as much in earlier times as people do in our age.

       There is also the suggestion that closets were not as necessary for most people in earlier times because they didn't own as many things.  Clothing wasn't as easy to obtain back in those days since they didn't have big department stores or clothing produced on the massive scale as it is now.   A few standard items and a couple of special occasion outfits were probably the norm back then.  Fashions didn't change as rapidly either for most regular folk.

       Even when I was growing up our family didn't seem to have as much as people have nowadays.   The hanging clothes for each of my family members easily fit into a small closet with room to spare for other items.  In each successive house that my parents moved to, the master bedroom seemed to have a larger closet, whereas the closets in my bedrooms were always the single door leading into a mini-room storage space.

         I can remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom closet playing with toys or just hiding in retreat.  As I grew older I would sometimes sit in the closet to work on my stamp collection since that is where I kept it stored.   When I got bigger in my pre and early teens I might sit on the floor just outside my closet having dragged out my stamp collection or model building supplies.  The closet always seemed to be my base of operations.  I kept my closet neat and orderly with everything in labeled boxes.

         My closet was my domain even though I shared a bedroom with my younger brother.   I'm not sure where my brother's stuff was kept, but he didn't get any closet space in our room until we moved to our house in Tennessee when I was in high school.  By that time sharing the closet didn't matter too much since I was now too big to be inside the closet and I no longer did the activities that I had previously done sitting on the floor.  But the closet was still the only place I had for storing my things and I continued to keep things neat and labeled so there was no mistaking what belonged to whom.  Even after I moved away from home I had possessions stored in that closet for several years until I had somewhere to keep them.

        Compared to the ones in the houses where I grew up, the closets in the house that my wife and I moved into sixteen years ago are very large closets.  Our house was new when we bought it and like most houses of comparable size built since the early eighties the bedroom closets have double sliding doors and considerable space for hanging clothes and a sizeable shelf at the top.  The closet in our master bedroom is of the walk-in style, but nowhere as big as the walk-in closet in my sister's house.  Her closet has hanging racks on each wall, drawers, shelves, and enough room for a dresser.  This is a walk-in closet that can be considered an extra room!

      Even with all of our kids gone from the nest, our four giant closets are jammed full of clothes and an array of other stored items.   In the bedroom that I now use as an office, the closet is filled from top to bottom with boxes containing office supplies, books, my stamp collection, and all sorts of items of personal memories.  I've been trying to tackle this one to get rid of things.  But it's also one of my treasure troves which I'll have to investigate eventually to decide what I need to do with the contents.

      Our closets have gone way past the storage of clothing and accessories.   We have everything except skeletons in them.  If I did have any skeletons to store they'd go in our garage or attic I suppose.  But we'll talk about those storage places in future posts.

       Do you have enough closet space in your home?   What do you keep in your closets?  Do you have any interesting closet memories or good closet stories to tell?

       

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Junk Drawers: Another Treasure Trove of Memories

Mundaneum, Mons, Belgium en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

       What normal house doesn't have at least one junk drawer?   You are undoubtedly familiar with what I'm talking about--that catchall place for the quick deposit of those things that linger between the trashcan and the destination of organized usefulness.  It's the convenient drawer where you can just toss things temporarily until you can figure out what to do with them later.

        When I was growing up, the main junk drawer in our house was in the kitchen.  Opening that drawer was sometimes like opening one of those joke nut cans that have the spring-loaded snakes that jump out. The drawer was often stuffed with an array of things my mother would shove in there to hide them away until she was ready to reorganize the drawer in order to start anew.  That organization job seemed to be a chore that was always put on delay until necessity deemed it to be done.

       This is where the ingenuity of being a kid came into play along with my mother's sly trick of making delegated housework pay off for me while giving me something to keep me occupied.   When I was old enough to start caring about such things, I became aware that the kitchen junk drawer held things of value like loose change.  That money was a bonanza for a kid like me who was getting a twenty-five cent a week allowance.  Periodically when that drawer got so stuffed that there it was difficult to open or close, I would make a deal with my mother.   I'd clean and organize the drawer if I could keep all the change.   This deal always worked for me unless my sister happened to beat me to it.  She rarely did.

        Organizing the junk drawer was actually a multiplicitous activity of which the main part was separating the trading stamps and putting them in their appropriate books.  Anyone who lived prior to the 1970's undoubtedly remembers the ubiquitous trading stamps that businesses gave away when customers made purchases from them.  There were the S & H Green, Top Value, Blue Chip, and other trading stamps.  It was a sort of early version of the loyalty programs that many businesses have today or the points given by credit cards.   The customer could accumulate the stamps into books and then redeem the filled books for merchandise offered at the trading stamp outlet stores.

      The stamps were like money and well worth keeping. It meant a lot of work licking and sticking these things in the books.  That became my job since I was more than willing to do it.   And since I was playing such a vital role in the savings stamp enterprise, my mother always let me peruse the catalogs to help decide what products to acquire when redeeming the stamps.   Good kid that I was I usually suggested items that would be useful for the household, but a few times my mother encouraged me to pick out something for myself.   I never had an argument with that.

     The stamps were the major items that created the explosive overflow of the drawers. Once those were dealt with the rest of the drawer was a matter of putting things in their place.  Unneeded receipts, coupons, and other papers would be thrown in the trash.  I was very careful about what I threw away, and I became quite discerning about what was not needed.  Once all the paper items were discarded, neatly stacked, or given to my mother for her to put in a more suitable place, the volume of substance in the drawer had been greatly reduced.

     The drawer also contained an assortment of odds and ends such as small tools (screwdrivers and pliers), hardware (nails, tacks, screws, and such), the occasional small toy, and almost always there were a few birthday candles.  All of these things would either be put in more appropriate places or merely placed more neatly in the drawer.  What was left?  The loose change of course!  I would gather up my found bounty and count my take for the day.  Usually it was over a dollar.   Not bad for a kid back in the 60's.

      I was able to do this job once every couple of months or so.  The money supplemented my other income rather nicely and I felt a sense of satisfaction in helping my mother to make our house a little neater.  There were other junk drawers that I would sometimes tackle even though those rarely contained loose change.  Organizing was something I enjoyed doing so I didn't mind the job.  And I would sometimes find very interesting things that would preoccupy my mind for a few minutes at least.

      Then there were the other personal junk drawers each family member had in their bedrooms.  My parents had theirs in nightstands beside their bed.  Those were supposed to be off limits to me and my sister, but now and then curiosity would lure us to sneak a peek.  My sister had her own drawer in her dresser.   And I had my junk drawer--or should I say treasure drawer--in my dresser.

       These days my wife and I have our own junk drawers throughout the house.   Accumulating small things has become easier in our times.  Those plastic storage drawers and bins are in many places in our home.  The options for storage available to consumers in our age make it easier to create a semblance--or should I say illusion--of order and organization.  But they are still junk drawers.   Now we just have more of them and I guess that usually means more junk or whatever you want to call it.

        Do you have catchall temporary storage drawers in your home?   Where do you normally stash stuff when you're in too big of a hurry to officially organize it?   Did your family collect and cash in trading stamps?  Who was the official junk drawer organizer in your parents' house when you were growing up?  

     

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House Cleaning to Dredge Up Memories

So Many Memories (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

   
           Not that I've been doing much house cleaning of late, but it's something that is high on my list of things I need to do.  And I'm talking declutterization, organization, and those types of things.   Going through life's accumulations can be like an archaeological dig.  Or a study of historical records.  A journey through the past.  Housecleaning can be functional as well as interesting and entertaining.

        The many piles and caches I have strewn about my house and tucked away in remote places normally unseen by anyone who might step into my abode are not necessarily messy.   They're more like an organized chaos.  A visitor who might just happen to notice our home amassment would probably think it seemed organized, but the fact is that everything is merely piled neatly.

         Whenever I do tackle one of these piles or areas, I typically start getting bogged down in reflection.  Memories start welling up as look through my possessions.  Sure, some of it is easily discarded, but other items become more difficult to decide upon.  Should I get rid of this or not?  That question pops up repeatedly and usually this will bring about a decision to postpone the decision.  It seems like whenever I do get rid of a questionable item like this, somewhere down the road I'll wish I had kept it.

         Sometimes I think I should just open a museum.  Or maybe I should rent a small warehouse.  Organizing and documenting can be a huge undertaking, but for preserving memories properly it's a necessity.

          Do you  have a lot of personal memorabilia?   How do you organize your accumulations?    Do you enjoy going through old stuff and dredging up memories?




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Do You Keep an Idea File?

Idea file is in center of photo.  Larger file in corner was
acquired later and is used for personal and business
records.

          Years ago when I was in high school and still living at home with my parents, one of the items on my gift wish list was a file cabinet.   It was on the birthday of either my junior or senior year when my mother got me the file cabinet that I had specifically picked out from the Sears catalog.  The cabinet consisted of two standard size file drawers on one side and a compartment with shelves and a safe on the other side.  This cabinet remained in my parents house for the next twenty years.

          Since childhood I had always had an interest in organizational fixtures in which to keep my belongings.   Usually I resorted to cardboard boxes.  When I began collecting stamps I acquired an index card size two drawer file and some metal storage boxes.  However, my storage capacity for papers and such was sadly lacking.  The official file cabinet made a world of difference for certain aspects of my ability to organize things that were mine.

          In the cabinet I kept mostly things that pertained to my writing and my personal memorabilia.  One drawer held file folders of newspaper clippings and papers that served as story ideas and prompts and other articles that pertained to my life or people I knew.  The other drawer was mainly for various publications, photos, personal documents, and other data that was important to me.  After I moved out of my parents house, the file cabinet was moved to their basement laundry room where it remained for the period of over a decade when I was on the road in the entertainment business.

         Eventually after I returned to Tennessee to settle down to a regular life, I retrieved the file cabinet contents from my parents basement and transferred them to a new file cabinet that I had purchased for my apartment.  The old file cabinet had rusted away at the bottom and had seen its better days.  As I looked at the cabinet by the curbside where I had hauled it to be removed by the sanitation department, I recalled those many years it had safely kept my files in an orderly fashion.  The old piece of office furniture had served me well.

         Now my newer more stylish looking file cabinet sits in my California writing office.  It's now over 20 years old, but having been kept in a dry environment it still looks almost like new.  My newspaper articles and other odds and ends are there waiting for me whenever I need a prompt or a memory.

         Do you keep an official "idea file"?    What types of things do you hang onto for purposes of writing research or records?   How do you store your writing files?


       

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