Stuff

In my mother's era, part of being a member of the Mormon women's auxiliary meant having an endless supply of creative Jello recipes [mayonnaise anyone? carrots? celery?]. It's different now. Everyone in my generation can make a chicken salad with nuts and grapes in it, blind. Or a nearly inedible, but rich, potato casserole to go with the ham eaten after a funeral.

In my era, as in hers, one rule is sacrosanct: a Mormon woman is expected to help someone in crisis. And so, I have found myself, on more than one occasion, helping clean because of evictions, illness, and death. I have tried, and failed, to help women tunnel through their overcrowded homes. I have examined the mummified remains of rats, deceased decades earlier. I have had to put the avocado-green-1977-cat-pee-stained curtains back upon the unusable bed because I could not convince the owner to discard them. I have stumbled through halls piled with old newspapers. And seen bags of petrified animal feces. And meandered through mazes of flimsy plastic bags. I have entered storage units containing nothing but catalogs for electronic parts. I have gazed upon piles of terrible, terrible, paintings. I have watched, helpless, as people figuratively drowned in their own possessions, unable to part with any of it.

This deluge of stuff seems seems to me to be a product of modern culture. A culture obsessed with thinness creates anorexics and bulemics. A society fixated on having the right possessions creates hoarders. But this illness is not only a product of capitalistic materialism. Dante's 4th circle of hell included two dueling armies of Hoarders and Wasters. Most religions warn against the draw of things. Primates like bright, shiny things. Rats collect everything. Maybe it's simply mammalian.

My husband is a collector, and if he could, would live as one of these lost hoarding souls, stumbling through unusable space. In his hidden places, I have found maps of places he has never visited. And boxes of obscure mathematical calculations. And shelves of books in Mayan and obscure Indian dialects. It is true that he is brilliant, and that he [rightly] considers himself the kind of person who can greet a Ghanian in Twi, or explain how lightning works. And that kind of person should have books in Twi. And yet no box is ever big enough for the person he wants to be. He needs to think of himself as a person who will one day be able to discuss politics in Tohono O'odham, or recite classics verbatim. And so he can't let go of the books that will one day make that possible. He wants to know everything. If he owns it, he may one day know it.

I assume that other people hoard for similar reasons: for the future and the past. An ancient woman keeps her unread tomes about the Rolling Stones because she was happy as a hippie, briefly, in the 60s. Another can't let go of ragged dolls because of some soft association in her childhood. And another holds onto those unflattering shoes she wore that one night. And the unworn wedding dress.

Some experts think that hoarders have social disorders, or experienced material deprivation during formative years. Others believe that the illness caused due to informational processing disorders, or perfectionism. Perhaps it is a natural state, kept only in check in the general population through some miracle gene.

Tyler Durden exploded his possessions in Fight Club because "You don’t own the things-the things own you." And there was no other way to get rid of the overbearing master. The abusive, unrelenting masters, cluttering not only our physical landscape, but our minds and hearts. And yet, we cannot wrest free from the clattering chains.

I too, collect. I have fossils and cookbooks, and various other small collections. Not enough to alert the Department of Health. But just enough to know that I have a problem. To discard my pizzelle maker [or crepe maker, or fondue pot] would be to discard that imaginary girl who makes wonderful, exotic, warm things. And I like that girl. She is competent. Whereas I am just me--and without my things, and without my hopes imbued in those things, I am a naked mole rat, as vulnerable as the day I was born.