The television show “Hoarders” highlights the lengths to which attachment to things can influence a person’s life.
On the show, which I do not TiVo – as I prefer to hoard other unwatched shows in my television queue – people who can’t bring themselves to throw anything away allow cameras into their homes to show the world how their desire to save things has become all-consuming.
Many hoarders can’t even throw away old food and they don’t seem to believe in washing dishes or wiping away cobwebs or recycling newspapers. They are people who need help, and sometimes they respond to interventions.
A visit to our family storage unit last weekend brought up the issue of hoarding, as some of the things we’ve held onto don’t seem to serve much purpose – and therefore should be gotten rid of, in theory. On the other hand, many of the items that are stored in our plastic bins that are stacked six feet high are tied to memories that I don’t want to get rid of.
Storing keepsakes in organized plastic bins in a storage unit certainly doesn’t qualify as hoarding, at least not in the TV sense. Our home is pretty clean and although we have to hurdle a baseball bat bag or move a fast food container off the couch now and then, we aren’t buried under a pile of stuff at home.
Transferring some boxes from the storage unit to our garage took us on a trip down memory lane and ultimately brought us to the recycling bin as we discovered items that held no sentimental value and were stuffed into storage for some reason years ago.
Opening some of the boxes was like
opening a time capsule.
One container was from my college years. It included copies of the school newspaper for which I was a reporter, programs from the Fresno State baseball games I attended and even some of my old term papers. Was any of it necessary to hold onto? Probably not. Would my grandkids care to leaf through my assignment book from my sophomore year? Doubt it. Was I going to get rid of it? No way.
It was neatly tucked into a snap-tight plastic bin with a lid and could easily be stored in the garage.
What about my Babe Ruth all-star jersey from 1986? I certainly couldn’t fit into it today – wow, was I skinny – and I certainly wasn’t going to throw it away. Am I guilty of living in the past? Nah, I’m guilty of enjoying a look back at my life through items that tell a story of my journeys.
Wives may not always understand that, but husbands have learned to accept that our motives will sometimes be questioned. We certainly don’t understand why wives hoard make-up products and lotions and perfume and bracelets, but as long as they’re tucked away in a bathroom drawer, what do we care?
As long as I keep my stuff hidden away in a plastic bin that is neatly stacked in storage or in the garage, my memory hoarding is permitted.
Checking the boxes last Sunday also revealed some old photos of the boys before they were school-age. Drawings from preschool, painted rocks, class pictures from kindergarten – it was all there, and we both agreed that those keepsakes were worth storing, even if they took up room.
With high school graduation one and two years away, respectively, for our boys, we know our empty nest years are right around the corner. No doubt we’ll revisit those boxes after the boys pack up and move away to college, looking for a little room to store what they don’t need and finding a spot for the items that will remind us of the days when we all lived under the same roof.
A person can have too much stuff, but they can’t have too many good memories. We have the room to store our keepsakes without them causing an avalanche in the living room or requiring a visit from the producers of “Hoarders,” so I won’t apologize for holding on to some items from the past.
My high school cleats? OK, not sure why those are there. That’s kind of weird. Not TV show weird, but cleats? Really?
Adam Breen teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @AdamPBreen.
