I talked with an old fella who’s wife divorced him because he had too much stuff. It ain’t easy to get rid of stuff and he still has all of it. My office and my upstairs music room are both stuffed with my stuff and I have a garage dedicated to storing my stuff too. Oh, there are the charities like Goodwill and some folks have yard sales but at those resale stores there is the danger that I might forget I gave it to the store and go back in and buy it back again because it is just what I am always looking for. Selling stuff for almost nothing rips my heart out. These slick dealers come in early and beg to take a look at your stuff and then they make you an offer for all of the good stuff for about $10. Right now I have on my desk about 150 photos of old railroad engines, all carefully identified and I am just about on the edge of donating them to a railroad museum. I started looking at all of them the other day and well, gee it is hard parting with them. When I was a young man I used to buy picture frames at auctions, spray them with gold paint and put a reproduction of a masterpiece in the frame and they would sell pretty good. I managed to provide pocket money for our trips to Europe several times. We had free air passes. Well I have never been able to break the habit of buying picture frames. I must have a couple of hundred lined up in the garage and I keep saying I will have a sale but I never get around to it and I keep on bringing home more frames.
I’m feeling like I will soon have a stuff crisis. With those photos and those trays of slides and the frames and all I have the feeling like it is all closin’ in on me. I can barely get to this computer I’m workin’ on. I’m toying at writing and editing four different books at one time and there is no space on my office tables to spread out anything. I can just see what might happen when they write my obit. “Art Fettig was devoured by his stuff recently. Services will be at 10am Saturday at the local church. There will be a giant housecleaning and yard sale immediately following the service. Lots of books and frames and interesting stuff.”
I share the ‘over-stuffed’ dilemma. But have since found museums and local non-profits who can either distribute useful items to those who are in need [aren’t we all, at one point or another?] or make them available for an appreciative audience. Example: a large stack of event programs from automobile races went to a colleague who writes historic racing articles, and he loved it all as it makes his research for historic accuracy so much easier. My collection of Lionel trains went to a train collector, and long-time member of the Train Collectors Association out of Pennsylvania, knowing he would re-sale the good items to other appreciative collectors and the rest went to a well respected toy museum for public display. I realized that as a de facto hoarder, I was denying others a chance to enjoy old memories of their own on a much broader scale (no pun intended). I am quite happy with my decision to de-clutter. As is my spouse, of course. Best Regards, Tim