Accumulators-Collectors-Hoarders

           It is safe to say that we are not hoarders. As evidenced by the "reality" show on television, we can still walk through our house without stepping over piles of rotted junk and we don't have several years’ worth of magazines or newspapers stored away. Also, we don’t really just buy stuff because of infomercials or because of super coupons. But we do tend to collect and accumulate things.

            Probably about ¼ to 1/3 of our possessions are inherited. My husband ended up being the last of his family and after his mom died, we got everything. That included a house (paid for luckily – yea!) a car (sold now), many, many clothes (given away), and a lot of furniture, knick knacks, paintings, kitchenware, silverware, and some junk. This happened when we were on our first overseas assignment so we had to fly back to the states and take possession, pack it up for storage, have a funeral, take care of the ashes, sell the car, find a property manager, and fly back to our overseas assignment in under two weeks. We did it with a day to spare. That said, we didn’t really have time to do a thorough vetting of the articles we had just gotten so much of it went into storage. When we finished that assignment and got the stuff back, it was still too soon for my husband to want to part with any of it. As a result, most of it has gone back and forth in different storage units and we still have it. Someday (most likely after retirement), we will sort it and get rid of a lot of it, hopefully. My husband is of the opinion that his mother bought good quality stuff and while that might have been true, it doesn’t mean it retains its quality or gets better with age and certainly not after it has been in storage for 8-15 years.

            Next up: inheritance from my side of the family. There wasn’t near as much there because I have surviving nieces and sister and brother. What there was has slowly disappeared over the years into the nieces homes, which is ok except for a couple of items that I had clearly marked “mine”! Oh well. I don’t live there and it would be in storage right now anyway. I did get a lot of garage things from my dad: small tools, sanders, big tools, etc. From my mom, I mostly got little things, some china, and some jewelry but all in all, a small amount to add to our possessions.

            As my husband and I were both set up in apartments and living on our own when we got married, we both had a lot of necessary things in the kitchen like pots and pans and knives and glasses and bake ware and such. Over the years, we have combined our kitchen and living things and been fairly good about getting rid of things when there were duplicates or we traded in furniture for new furniture. So a small amount, maybe another ¼ of our possessions came from what we both had before getting married.

            Still leaving about ½ of what we own to account for and why we have it. There are some collections in our care. I started early in collecting things like Lladro, Swarvoski, paperweights, darning eggs, masks, fish figurines, and tin boxes. These started slowly and then before I knew it, people had given me gifts of one thing or another and suddenly I had collections. We also received a large collection of decorative plates from my mother-in-law. My father-in-law was a painter so we have maybe 40 of his paintings which are very sacrosanct and can never be sold or given away. (That’s fine, I like most of them!). My husband and I dabbled in Asian painting too so now we have maybe 20 of our own paintings as well. You see how things spiral out of control! Then we got into stained glass and now we have several stained glass windows that are in storage. I did sell two of my stained glass windows when we sold our house as they were installed and too difficult to un-install but I miss those windows.

            As we started traveling, we started getting souvenirs from the places we visited. Each souvenir means something to us and we love to look at them all but we have now traveled to many, many, many, many countries and now have  “collections” of rugs (Turkey, China, India, Turkmenistan, Morocco), tiles (Morocco, Korea, China, Spain, Italy), antique locks (China, Japan), netsukes (China, Hong Kong, Japan), ink pots (England, France), pipes (Turkey, VietNam, Laos and no we don’t smoke), pins (Disney – LOL), crystal eggs, crystal birds, painted bottles, perfume bottles, antique glass, fishing balls, wine decanters (yes, we do drink wine), nested bowls, nested dolls, mah jong sets, ginger jars, lacquer boxes, singing bowls – well, I could go on but you must get the picture by now. When we are temporarily stationary and have all our things out of storage, I love looking and playing with all of this stuff. I’m not a buy it and keep it “safe” by never touching it or looking at it kind of person. I bought it to enjoy it and use it. BUT with the amount of things we have now, things must be rotated! Wow, that’s pretty ridiculous. Our friends say it is like we live in a cultural museum that spans many cultures, many years and many countries. I like that analogy. I must admit though that now I don’t buy near as many souvenirs as I used to get. One reason is because so many souvenirs are now no longer country specific. And also, I am trying to go for the very unusual and hard to fine because I might already have something like it in storage.

            The collections of various items are why I think of myself as a “collector”. But I think we can also call ourselves accumulators. This is due entirely to the fact that we have been expats for a number of years. The first expat assignment, we were quite excited to be in Korea and purchased a number of pieces of furniture thinking that we would never have a chance to get them again. Then we went back to Korea on another assignment. I rounded out some room settings with a few more purchases but not much. Our next assignment was – yep, Korea.   But there was a long gap between assignments and when we went over this time, all our stuff went into storage and we only had a small airline shipment of things to bring with us. We were able to purchase furniture and kitchen ware and such for our apartment in Seoul. At the end of the assignment, we were offered the chance to purchase the furniture and such for pennies on the dollar so we did.

            Everyone thinks that when we pack up and move that we take that opportunity to get rid of excess stuff and furniture. Hasn’t worked that way for us. We just store it all albeit I try hard to get rid of a lot but it just doesn’t’ seem to happen. Later I think, why the heck did I store that but at the time, it was too hard to just toss it away. I think we have enough furniture and such for two houses easily. And because we are in temporary housing again, I find myself getting things that I know I have in storage but I just can’t find it. We have definitely become accumulators. Someday I will see everything again. Someday I will think what the heck, why do I have all this stuff. Someday but not today.