“We are living in a material world, and I am a Material Girl.” – Madonna
Pasadena resident Adrienne Bass is the manager of the Friends of the Pasadena Public Library (FOPPL) Bookstore located at 1500 East Villa Street in Pasadena. Anticipating her upcoming patio book sale on Saturday, April 5th (11:00 AM – 2:00 PM), she says, “We receive approximately 500 donated books every week. I have spoken to many folks who have donated, mostly seniors, and they all tell me that they are downsizing, moving, or weeding out their book collections.”
Faced with backlash from bibliophiles, tidying guru Marie Kondo has rescinded her advice that we should be keeping no more than 30 books at a time in our home.
Monrovia resident and professional de-clutterer / organizer Hannah Jungbauer (@Westcoast_Organizer) serves clients all over the San Gabriel Valley. She says “I appreciate Marie Kondo for inspiring people to offload their stuff, but minimalism is absolute garbage. That woman is a sadist.”
In his 2021 book “You Are What You Read: A Practical Guide to Reading Well,” Robert DiYanni writes, “Reading is worthwhile, paradoxically, because it is not absolutely essential for living – it’s not like breathing; it’s not required for getting on in life…Reading is a luxury more than a necessity, though one, certainly, that enriches our lives.”
The fact is that books often create the flashpoint for people who are fighting clutter, and losing. Books suck up space, in accumulation can make a room feel ponderous, and are, of course, notoriously heavy to pack and ship and schlep when relocating.
Perhaps partly because of these feels, Gallup reports, “Reading appears to be in decline as a favorite way for Americans to spend their free time.” Even during homebody-making COVID, Gallup reported that only 6 percent of US adults cited reading as their favorite way to spend an evening, down from 12 percent in 2016.
And while book clubs may seem like a reassuring sign in terms of book-loving, maybe not so much. There’s this thing that I now call the “Crooning Crustaceans” phee-nom. Go into a thrift store (acknowledged ground zero for us collector-types) and peep the bookshelves. Often, you’ll see eight to ten copies of the same book racked neatly together like sorority sisters at a hangover brunch. “Where the Crawdads Sing” is well-represented these days, suggesting to me that book groups read, discuss, dish, diss, then donate their books. No wonder Adrienne Bass is swamped.
Here’s the thing: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs does not include books. Nor does it include vintage Taxco silver earrings, or holiday decorations, your 4th-grade report card, paperweights, Rolling Stones memorabilia, decades of fam and vacay photos, Star Wars action figures, or souvenir spoons in their decorative rack.
Anthropologists conjecture that humans were nomadic until about 10,000 years ago, meaning that we travelled light out of necessity. Actually, earrings may figure into that mobile mix more easily than, say, a piano, or those dozens of rare seashell specimens.
The recent wind-fire-mud devastation in our region has got everyone I know vermisht, shpilkes and fershimmilt about what late comic George Carlin ranted about on the subject of “stuff.” Many of us lost literally all of our stuff, and the big box for our stuff, namely our houses, to the burn. Others of us evaded the literal flames, but sustained huge damages from smoke and ash.
Those of us who somehow missed the whole thing may now look upon our collections with a new sense of guilt, dread, and maybe a desire to shed. We are, after all, in the Year of the Snake.
The inevitable question arises: will it happen again? If not more wildfires, although these seem inevitable, what if there’s a major quake? What if my landlord sells our rental? Do I really want to hang on to all of those years’ worth of Nat Geo magazines? Or grandma’s Limoges? Or my skis, skates and scuba gear, untouched since Obama was in office?
Documentary reality television programming feeds our angst about stuff. “Hoarders” has been the mothership for viewers interested in the subject since its A&E debut in 2009. Some of us watch “Hoarders” to reassure ourselves that we’re Not.Really.That.Bad. – similar to watching “My 600-Lb. Life” which makes us feel absolutely steel-willed and svelte.
Similar gross-out schadenfreude ensues on Facebook, visiting www.facebook.com/Nottheworstcleaner and other extreme cleaners who dive deep into the foul rag and bone-shop of hoarders’ homes, dressed for combat.
The Delusional Stash
Other series, “American Pickers,” the long-running “Antiques Roadshow,” and the new “Filthy Fortunes,” serve as the antidote to “Hoarders,” since at least some of the guests inevitably cash in by selling their goods which often represent a lifetime of collection.
And therein lies the danger: some clutter-prone souls may rationalize their floor-to-ceiling stashes by saying they’re minding a gold rush that’s just waiting to be panned.
One frequently hears words to this effect from vinyl-fanciers who keep vast stores of LPs. While some rare albums do indeed fetch major bank, and LPs provide a multi-media experience with liner notes and large-format cover art, a stop at Poo Bah Record Shop on Colorado saned me right up on this subject. Although painful for me to release, my banker-boxes of discs contained only standard musical fare, not valuable to anyone but me.
LPs, on a par with those dozens of huge, glossy, overpriced coffee table art books I thought I had to have, also are a nightmare to transport. Stingy-brim fedora, lo-fi hipsters notwithstanding, every yard sale in America is well-stocked with once-hot wax. Many resale shops will no longer take them, for precisely the same reasons that led their owners to release them.
Going one step beyond Adrienne Bass’s patio sale, where you can fill a bag with books for a mere $5, Poo Bah always sets out hundreds of used albums beside the store entrance, free pickin’s for any interested takers. I have a feeling my Pete Seeger albums are still out there, like crooked-toothed, bleary-eyed senior canines at the pound, hopelessly waiting and wishing for another warm and appreciative forever-home.
How much is enough? How much is too much? And who decides this?
Unless the health department gets involved as often is the case in “Hoarders” interventions, the decision is personal and maybe even arbitrary.
Maid’s Day Off
What’s it to you if I prowl eBay, Etsy and estate sales, looking for another 1953 Mattel metal crank wind-up music box Easter egg, in candy-pink or baby-blue, sweetly decorated with wildflowers and a cheerful meadowlark? Not only are nine (so far) not enough, but I haven’t yet found the “one,” my Great White Whale, since none in my current collection produce music any longer, and I’m curious. What was the song selection? “Here Comes Peter Cottontail?” “In Your Easter Bonnet”? The Paschal Troparion? This unresolved question is, of course, my flimsy rationale for continuing the Easter egg quest.
So what?
We checked in with South Pasadena therapist Sonnet Daymont LMFT who specializes in treating trauma, anxiety and ADHD. She says, “The difference between collecting an item that you love and hoarding it is that collecting something does not interrupt normal daily living or affect relationships like hoarding does. If you have filled a home with so many items that you are ashamed to have people over, that is harming your ability to have relationships. A collection enhances relationships. You share in community with what you collect, and you are probably proud to show it to friends and family. If you have a collection of items that has filled a room or a home. and your spouse or child is expressing upset, it is worth reaching out to a therapist to assess.”
Initially, it seems relatively simple to discern between clutter, and the clutter of collecting, versus hoarding, which Daymont defines as a subset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Television-worthy hoarding typically involves risks to health and safety, like spoiled food or blocked exits, while clutter is simply aesthetically disturbing to tidier people. Our tolerance for such things is subjective, but the actual sniff-test is a good place to start.
The conversation with Daymont reminds me of my sainted mother who was above all else a poet, artist, free spirit, and not anybody’s housekeeper. And she loved having people over in the evening to smoke endless cigarettes, swill back Gallo cream sherry, and plan the revolution. If anyone lifted a liberal eyebrow at the greasy dishes in the sink, brimming ashtrays, the aroma from the multi-cat litterbox, the perpetually unmade bed, the stacks of unread newspapers, she’d happily bark in her best Bette Davis voice, a long-ashed Camel perched in the corner of her mouth, “Ha! Must be the maid’s day off.”
Hannah Jungbauer’s context for a life of organizing other people’s stuff: “I’m the child of a doomsday prepper, where we had blackout drapes in case Satan was looking in the windows.” Prior to the fires, her focus was readying people’s homes for Christmas, and conducting deep cleanings for spring, just after tax season. Now, she’s more often involved in helping survivors deep-clean and restore their damaged spaces.
Operating without judgment, she works with clients to regain their sense of sanctuary, whether that peaceful vibe has been violently hijacked by disaster, or by inherited family relics that may be tough to part with, or by a growing mountain of new purchases acquired through compulsive shopping.
Jungbauer says, “We are beholden to our stuff, especially as women. Women are keepers of culture, including family culture and lore. So when an elderly mom or dad downsizes or dies, often it’s a woman in the family who gets the stuff. She may not, in fact, want mom and dad’s stuff, but there is a lot of pressure and expectation to hold the items in reverence. Possibly forever.”
Jungbauer says “If someone feels ambivalent towards their items, I ask a lot of questions. I do that anyway, but it’s not for my knowledge. It’s more to challenge them on why they feel the way they do about the item. I’m not asking if it brings them joy. I’m asking are you holding on to it, because a specific person might stop by in 10 years and you want to put it on display so they see it. I’m asking did the person who owned an object pass in a tragic way, and now you don’t have closure, and that’s why you keep this. I’m asking does this go with your aesthetic and is it practical to have? Mind you, things can be impractical to have and that’s totally fine, but what’s your limit?”
Theoretically, a house-fire might almost sound like a welcome catharsis from all this, but it rarely is. Although this usually is said in a disparaging tone, our objects possess surprising power. Thus, it’s more than merely a turn of phrase that every living space I’ve ever occupied becomes a house of altars, each tableaux dedicated to a current thought or past experience. There is no shame in admitting, BTW, that sometimes precious, beautiful (to you) objects may take the place of relationships with people, especially the dearly departed.
Sonnet Daymont says “People love things for all kinds of reasons. There could be an emotional tie to the item, an emotional connection to the item, or even of sensory experience of touching or using the item. The purpose of loving a possession can absolutely be healthy, if it enhances your life and your relationships, that is a sign that it is a healthy item to possess.”
My own theory: because we are primarily creatures composed of energy or spirit, we grab onto material things not only for meaning, but to prove to ourselves that we’re not dreaming, and that we really do in fact exist in physical terms.
However, some people collect or hoard because of unresolved trauma, says Daymont. She says “Loss of material items, especially to fire, is one of the hardest things we can go through as humans. If the experience of suddenly losing everything you own and your neighborhood is hard for you, you are not alone. It is hard for the strongest, most resilient people. In terms of coping, staying in connection with people going through the same thing, accessing therapy and focusing on radical self-care is a recipe for healing. Sleep, eat healthy food, continue exercising and prioritize accessing support.”
Jungbauer offers further practical advice, starting with always having a current, refreshed Go-Bag stocked and ready to go, and she recommends making a Go-Bag checklist as secondary precaution. Being super-organized may help you move calmly though the next emergency and possibly have the presence of mind to remember to retrieve those collections of precious gold and silver coins, not to mention your Bar Mitzvah tallit and yarmulke.
From there, she says, “Start a ‘Book of Life.’ How you govern everything in your home. Put a section in there for dates and times for when the AC was last serviced. Put a section in there for all the medication you’re on and where the passports are located. Keep all this knowledge in your book of life that keeps your home running. In an emergency, you can have a section where you flip right to it and it gives you the five most important phone numbers. You’re not going to remember without your cell phone the addresses you may need your insurance adjuster’s number. Everything in that section, you can just rip out of the book and run out the door and you’re going to be okay.”
She also recommends scanning and digitizing every photo and document in your possession. Even if you keep, and lose, the originals, all of your data can be easily safeguarded on a thumb-drive or in cloud storage.
Regarding the rage and numbness she encounters in fire-related cases, she says, “I’ve noticed within loss, people try to build up armor. It starts off as something mental like putting up walls. but it’s resulting in something physical like building a physical nest around each wall or on their beds around their heaps of stuff.”
Collectors Weigh In
My own reality-check on the topic: can I find it easily? The other day, a friend’s daughter was invited to a Western-themed dance, and the family wasn’t keen on spending a mint on cowgirl gear that a 14-year-old fashionista would probably tire of before summer.
But within a few minutes, I had rounded up not one but two fringed suede jackets, a pair of well-worn red cowboy boots, a faded blue bandana, a tee-shirt that reads “This ain’t my first rodeo,” complete with bucking-bronc motif, a red-beaded bracelet in a Southwest pattern, and an artfully crushed black straw ladies’ cowboy hat to which I had added a single sterling silver post earring of a bear paw, Dine-made, and a hatband of genuine turquoise heishi. Her delight in this, and the ease in finding it, make me think that my archive is a healthy. albeit messy, domestic ecosystem.
If you can’t find items in your collection, then you’ve got too much inventory, or at the very least you need a better filing system.
I also subscribe to the add / subtract philosophy: whenever I acquire something new, I gift or donate something else to “make space,” at least energetically. The only other absolute rule that makes sense to me: curate your wardrobe annually and jettison clothes and shoes that don’t fit you. Especially now, there are so many people right here in our hood who would love a pair of size 12 ladies’ jeans, or a few cotton shirts, or even a pair of plastic flip-flops.
Reassuringly, neither Jungbauer nor Daymont are hard-liners when it comes to stuff. Jungbauer says “I absolutely can tell the difference between hoarding, clutter and collections. For me, everyone has a vice. Something that keeps them comforted in their own home. Me personally, I collect smoosh pennies from smoosh penny machines, antiques and very bizarre looking knick-knacks.”
Daymont shares her practice with a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a trained therapy dog who even appears as her logo mark. A former dog-walker in San Francisco, enterprising Daymont has patented her design for a slow-feeder bowl for dogs; she’s also written a noir crime thriller.
And, thrillingly, she collects stuff.
She says, “Collecting an item you love can be a way to enjoy life. I myself have two collections in my therapy office, a collection of dog figurines and a collection of rocks from going out and digging for rocks, a hobby called rock-hounding. The figurines remind me of my grandmother, who also collected them, and the rocks remind me of my love of science class as a child. Rocks are fun to me, and remind me that nature is bigger than anyone can understand, and I like having that reminder around the office to share with my clients.”
I ask if people gift her with dog figurines she actually doesn’t want. Her reply: “Not yet.”
