Lessons from Too Much Stuff (and A&E)

There are five levels of hoarding. You can tell a person's level not so much by the amount of stuff they have (although that may give you a clue) but from the type of help they need to fix the problem. Maybe they just need a friend to come in and point out that no, they actually never wear those 18 pairs of four inch heels. Or maybe they need a professional organizer, a trained psychologist, and pest control. 

Rarely does a television show change my life but I can now point to two. Back in 95/96 I watched the movie Babe. Yes the one with the talking pig. I've been a vegetarian ever since. Three weeks ago I had exhausted my Hulu queue and Netflix instant popped up the show Hoarders. I'd always avoided it due to its "reality show" genre and I just assumed it took advantage of people in compromising situations. What I saw however was a story that reflected my own habits of consumption and keeping in a way I had never had before.


One of the subjects in episode one hoarded food. She couldn't bring herself to throw it away because she had spent good money on it, and it was probably still edible. She disregarded expiration dates and only tossed food when it was swollen. Clearly even that wasn't wholly the truth. She told the very patient mental health professional that part of the reason why she liked having so much food was because it meant she'd never have to be dependent on others. Even if she didn't have a job and was poor, she'd have all this food she'd saved up. The mental health specialist softly pointed out that actually it was the food that was causing her possible eviction. She thought the food was bringing her independence, when really it was keeping her from that independence.

I walked into my studio, looked around at the piles of "potential" and realized suddenly that my stacks of thread, tape and tulle might as well have been pork, pumpkins and pasta.  I think these materials are helping me be creative, when really they are keeping me from creativity.

This woman wasn't being asked to throw a way a piece of rotten meat, she was being asked to throw away her independence. Her ability to feed herself. That's what she saw when she held these things in her hand. For this lady, and for me, it's about changing the very way we see an object. Changing how we calculate the worth of an individual item.

Each time I hold up an object, I think of all the potential creative projects I could do with that object. Throwing it away means throwing away those ideas. But I'm starting to see it another way. This food was going to keep this lady from being self reliant. These materials are keeping me from being creative. I have no count for how many times I haven't been able to do a creative project b/c I've knocked over something in my studio and had to spend time cleaning up the mess or given up on a project because I couldn't find a specific and necessary tool. I've never kept track of that time. But oh if I had.

I have spent the past three weeks getting rid of huge swaths of my collections. I debated offering it to friends but knew if I kept it for that intent it would go back into my own bookshelves and drawers. I had to find the strength and act on it. But this process is changing how I evaluate the worth of something. Yes I still have strong emotional ties to objects- magazines for example are still impossible for me to pitch* no matter how much thinking I do on them- but I am beginning to understand their real weight. Yes they may spark an idea but if they do, I write the idea down and if I'm not going to act on the idea right away and if the material is something I can get again, I pitch it. Because I have to ask myself if the "potential" of the object is worth housing, storing, maintaining and tripping over the object for a day, week, month, year, lifetime? Is that potential worth more than me being able to work on some other idea because I've covered my workspace yet again?

The answer I'm finding again and again is that it's probably not worth it. But it is worth the weight of graphite in a notebook. And when we move in two weeks I will work my ass off to continue the mental removal fight until I have the right amount of material for the creative life I want to lead. I know I will be fighting these tendencies all my life, but at least for the moment, I think I've gained some powerful tools in seeing them for what they really are. And the true cost they bring.


*Anytime I say "pitch" or "throw out" I clearly mean give to Goodwill or recycle.