Ultimately, I think they feel they're going to use it, but it's still piled up in the attic after they're gone.
PACKRAT SHOES TV
"We've gone into houses where they've saved every TV dinner tray they ever ate off of, every box something came in, every greeting card, every empty lipstick tube they've ever used. "Saving is a very individual thing," concurs estate-liquidator Anita Glick of A.M. The items worth saving, she tells her clients-who pay her $20 to $30 per hour to create order out of chaos-"are the ones that have value to you." And what someone values, she says, "can tell a lot." Our life is made up of memories, and you don't want to part with them all." I never insist that someone throw away something they're attached to. Even those who are very bright and very well-organized still can't bring themselves to give up certain things from their past, despite the fact they've got a terrible space problem. In extreme cases, people will build a kind of fortress of possessions that they seem to feel protects their integrity or personality."įor some people, says Fogelman, "deciding what to save and what to throw out can be agony. An executive holds onto an old college notebook, a widow keeps her late husband's favorite coat, a woman whose kids are now grown still saves all her old PTA files.
"People seem to keep objects that give them a kind of security. Others feel strangled by too many possessions and delight in tossing things out.īut packrat or ascetic, hoarder or tosser, virtually everyone clings to some items "for no rational, definable reason," says Bethesda organizing consultant Sylvia Fogelman. Some people surround themselves with empty wine bottles, old greeting cards, bits of string. What is trash to one person is a treasure to another.
They are the knicks and knacks that make up a life, the pieces of personal history that collect in attics and basements, closet tops and bottom drawers: a worn-out catcher's mitt, a first pair of toe shoes, a freshman essay on Chaucer, the brass knob from Grandma's front door.
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