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Adrift in a Sea of Stuff - Help!
I'm a thrower-outer. I'm not adamantly opposed to clutter and I like knick-knacks. But I don't keep a plastic fork because we might need it in the event the poles reverse and our metal ones quit working. My daughter is the one with all the crap. I clear her stuff out all the damn time, throwing crap away and donating other things. But she's getting old enough now that I don't like having to rifle through all of her bags and boxes. She's old enough to take care of her own stuff, and I'd like to start granting her a little more privacy. Oh, but the stuff.
I just found her stash of bookbags. Full of markers, pinecones, gum, a half-eaten Bonbel cheese. Lids to pens, without the pens. Paper trash of every stripe.
I control what she brings in the house. She has a deep-seated desire to acquire, and is upset if we go to, say, the hardware store and she doesn't get something. She's not bratty about it, but a little wounded. I realize this could become a monster of an issue, so I'm working to disconnect pleasure from acquisition. But it's not just buying that makes her happy. Her friends give her all sorts of crap, all the time. Rubber bands, crappy play jewelry, pencil erasers. I would rather not frisk her whenever she comes in the door, but it's getting to that.
The child loves stuff, especially the proximity of stuff. She stashes little items in her bed, in bags, all over the house. She like to be near it. It's truly bizarre. And she can name every damn item she has, even if she can't find it.
I just have no idea what kind of motivation/consequences/ whatever to use. I've tried all the usual, including getting rid of tons of stuff, taking it away for a while and making her earn it back. Any brilliant ideas?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on -
My spouse just took some epic personality test at work. Ok, I just went and got the stuff so I could talk more knowledgeably. :) The test is called the "Clifton Strengths Finder." One of them is "Input," the description of which is: "You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information- words, facts, books, and quotations- or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs [editorial comment: what an odd list of things. Is this imagined "you" like, 130 years old?]. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting... These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you mind need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don't feel comfortable throwing anything away."
The suggestions for this are to: work on acquiring knowledge (a new word a day, for example) as opposed to stuff, create a filing system (simple or complex) that allows instant access to your stuff, accept that you will never feel you know [have] enough, and to partner with somebody that keeps you on track when you start down non-useful paths.
I don't know if this is helpful or apt or not, but it's worth noting enough people have this trait that this personality test gave it a label, and that maybe re-framing it as not a personality flaw but a strength that just needs to be channeled might help. I'm not sure you can separate pleasure from acquisition for her, lots of people derive joy in collecting things, hunting them down, and being around their collections.
I like to collect things too, and had all kinds of stuff as a child when I had no spending money and no ability to collect something "worthwhile." I still keep every card, letter, etc that is sent to me because I like to sift through my "archive." I suppose. Even now I have a giant wall of coffee mugs that serve as a record of my travels, research, jobs, etc. I still LOVE to collect information, and am totally blissed out when I have a reference or an article or a book that might help somebody.
Maybe pick one kind of thing she could collect, something relatively rare, and work on it together? My family always checks and sees if there's any cheap carnival glass when they're at flea markets or junk stores for me. They know I love it, but the rules of the game I've set up mean I can't buy it on the internet and I can't spend over $20.
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Permalink Reply by Herasmus B. Dragon on
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Kindof like McGlory's husband, I've evolved from an epic hoarder to someone who's always looking for new things to learn. I was always obsessed with picking up broken things especially because I wanted to fix them. My mom did the same thing I do with O's overabundance of art projects and toss a.few every week or so. She doesn't miss any of it so.far, as long as I'm.careful about what goes.
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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on
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Oh no, sorry for the confusion, he took the personality test and brought it home which I then read through, hoarded away the information about the different types of personalities, and cited at this time. I was speaking about myself for the most part. Though, to be fair, he also falls into this Input category. We have a LOT of books and mugs and these are both of our faults. :)
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Whoops! See, i was too distracted to sufficiently read her post.
mcglory13 said:Oh no, sorry for the confusion, he took the personality test and brought it home which I then read through, hoarded away the information about the different types of personalities, and cited at this time. I was speaking about myself for the most part. Though, to be fair, he also falls into this Input category. We have a LOT of books and mugs and these are both of our faults. :)
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Permalink Reply by Gumbo Momma on -
None, NB is the same way. I think it might be hereditary because my inlaws are notorious pack rats. My father in law has a closet of old broken phones that he justifies keeping by saying: "well if my current phone breaks, I can use parts from these other ones to fix it!" Because obviously that has worked so well for him so far. I'm a thrower-outer too, and I seriously have had to "hide" trash so that my father in law doesn't pick through it.
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Permalink Reply by hermit crab on -
I can identify with the wish to declutter a persistent collector. My husband is an amazing collector of all kinds of crap - mostly rocks, pieces of wood, and junk that he'd like to make into sculpture - so I can tell you that this tendency doesn't require even the slightest financial investment to manifest itself. Jesus, we have so many rocks.
I collected books when I was younger, although I am perfectly happy now to have digital rather than paper access. As a single person I tended to the large-empty-rooms-with-long-white-drapes aesthetic. I walk around my house baffled at the amount of crap there is. But, there it is. I have found that I like it best when it's displayed in a pleasing way, so we have lots and lots of display shelving for our rocks. Maybe she could be induced to think of it as a display, so that she'd come to see what she already has, and maybe that could be a basis for culling - like, once your stuff no longer fits on this shelf, you need to get rid of the extra - or something like that.
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Permalink Reply by wookie on -
I don't mind that the kids have weird stuff... or what I think of as crap, as long as it (a) doesn't attract vermin and (b) doesn't interfere with my ability to have a mostly clean/tidy house. I clean out their backpacks outside.
My house rules (which are so far working okay) are that if it's not part of a known toy/group of toys, like blocks, books, CD's, Playmobil etc. then it goes in your "special box" (they're maybe 15" cubes that live in their closet). If your special box is full, you need to make some hard choices. If your box of, say, dressup clothes or stuffed animals is now too full and you get something new, you have to pull out a few things to be donated to make room. So as an example with the play jewelry... get a small jewelry box. If it doesn't fit in there anymore, it's time to make a decision about what stays and what goes. :P
I model this behavior as well, I cull all the closets including my own a couple times a year. I have a "special box" and a couple full of stuff I am saving for a particular project that I haven't gotten too. But I've offloaded a good 2/3rds of my fabric. I'm hoping to get my husband to cull his dumping zone in the basement by a minimum 50% this week.
What drives me insane is my middle child's ability to squirrell stuff away in what seems to me to be crazy places.
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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on
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Ok, now I'm kind of digging the notion of shelves filled with rocks. Sigh.
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Permalink Reply by Boring User Name on -
Although I like the various suggestions (especially McG's personality study), and I'm sure you've thought of this...but I wouldn't discount your many moves over her life. Her desire to hold onto various physical items could be a need to control her circumstances. The threat of leaving things behind might create more urgency to accumulate? Or something? I'm totally making up the armchair child psychology...
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Permalink Reply by Mamawho on
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Daria, that's occurred to me, too. I'd probably be even more sympathetic if she would make the slightest attempt to throw away trash and put other stuff away, or at least in her room.
She's more of a magpie than a packrat. If it appeals to her, she sticks it in her nest. HC, she has pretty rocks stashed all over her room. Sometimes I don't intercept them before doing the laundry, and I hear them dinging around the washer. I also have a huge wood bowl full of rose rocks. They actually look like roses.
And I collect art pottery, and owls, and nesting dolls. And scarves and brooches. And have several hundred books. But I put my shit away and cleverly display it, dammit.
I think I'm frustrated by her serious messiness - the cheese in the bedroom blew my lid - but also worried about her love of consumption. Perhaps I should worry about that after the trauma of packing her stuff has ebbed a bit.
McG - that personality stuff is fascinating. I collect information. Trivia makes me happy. I also like to learn to do things. I've taught myself to crochet in the last month, just because I didn't know how. But I felt compelled to learn about the history of crochet.
Back to my boxes. . .
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