Collections and Clutter

[dragon wench]

Reading through a thread on collecting over in the Morrowind forum made me think about my collecting habits (or lack thereof) in real life.

I'm generally a tidy person, I loathe clutter, and I'm not a pack rat. Indeed, about every three months I go through my stuff and eliminate any item I no longer want, or need,
But..there are some things I do collect and hang on to for no logical reason. Erm...books and music... I have shelves full of books, many of which I'll never read again, but I can't bear to part with them. Same with music; I have stacks of CDs and LPs, and I just can't throw any out, even if I don't listen to them.
But, probably my least rational collection fetish is candles... I have them everywhere. The living room, dining room table, bedroom and bathroom. I also have several in the bathroom, and even one in the office. The last time I counted there were at least 20 of different sizes, colours and shapes adorning any number of surfaces....

Anyone else have collections that lack any real rationale?

[Kipi]

I have bad habbit to collect music...
I have lots of cds in my shelves, most of them I haven't listened in years, oldest are from 10 years ago, and probably haven't listened them since...

Donald Duck -magazines are also such thing to me. I have every magazine published here since 1952 in two shelves. Not reading them excluding the newer ones...

[Siberys]

Expensive clutter-

I own every DND book from all of D20 (3rd, 3.5, d20 modern, d20 future, d20 start wars, the supplements of all of those, swords and sorcery, etc) and I have them ALL over my room.

I had a job at a fast food joint when I was 15 and stayed till I was 17, I rarely had any bills, a 25 dollar bus pass was all I needed really. So I bought a TON of books.

[Philos]

Music and books seems to be popular and I am guilty on both counts as well. Although I do find myself pulling an old book out that I have on a topic I may have just remembered or recently heard something about. Especially can't part with my old LP's either DW.

My most embarrassing one is the 2 full drawers of VHS tapes of movies and TV shows (that I wanted to save) in our TV armoire. What's embarrassing is that I have about half these now on DVD and really don't even need the VHS copy anymore.

DW,
Why, there's nothing wrong with candles. Because you never know when the power might go out, you're just being prepared, Right?

[BlueSky]

Music...LP's..too many to count...finally able to rid myself of them, gave them to my daughter and un-official son-in-law, then they moved in with me and brought them back in the house. Meanwhile I went back to the habit, only now its CD's. As for books, well I keep too many...but have been able to resist buying more, I do work in a library and can read without buying.
Candles, well lets just say I burn through a lot at the house I have a tendency to turn off as many lights as possible and use candlelight to light the house.
Have been trying to un-clutter the house but some things you just hang on to.
Complete collection of the old underground comics, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and some other old comics, old Fillmore and Avalon Ballroom Posters, most us these I have finally framed and hung on the walls. Guess I'm just a packrat.

[Moonbiter]

I come from a family of collectors, so I'm genetically challenged from birth. I have a book collection of epic proportions, and since I buy a meter of new ones every second month, space has become a bit of a problem. Over half of my books and most of my comic books are kept in safe storage outside my home until the day I buy that mansion. Then there is the matter of the antique weapons collection, the vintage guitar collection, the fishing gear, the DVDs, the vinyl records, the cd's, the roleplaying stuff... it goes on and on. I used to collect miniatures for tabletop gaming and roleplaying, but it got so out of hand I had to stop. Just a week ago I shipped about VHS tapes into storage. Throw them out? NO WAY! There's stuff that will never come out on DVD, and some of it will fetch a small fortune on eBay even today. The biggest problem at the moment is magazines. I subscribe to a number of them, from entertainment to science, and I'm deadly afraid of throwing any of them away in case I lose an interesting article. What to do.....

[Chimaera182]

Oh, I have like 60+ music CDs, many of which I don't want. I often say that if I ever clean out my collection, at most 10 would make the cut. And yet, I never get around to cleaning that out. Also, I have tons of books. I do re-read some of them, some multiple times (to the point that I actually had to buy new copies), but others I could easily do without. I even have old school books I could take back to the bookstores and get some money for (not much, but it'd still be something) and yet I never can get myself to gather them up and bring them back. I also have a ton of PC games I never play; there are also games I was once interested in but have no desire to play, and of those sometimes I actually do regain a modicum of interest and reinstall (but playing them is usually rather brief). I could definitely get rid a lot of them, but again I just can't seem to bring myself to do it.

My floor tends to be littered with papers from classes past. The majority of the time, if I find a stack of papers on the floor, it's from two even three semester (a year to a year and a half) ago. I recall being told early in my academic career that it's wise to hold on to some of your papers for a semester in case some issue comes up which requires you to use them to show evidence of some grievance (I've never had to, though). So when it comes time to clean, those are the first things to be dumped, but the fact that I keep them for so long is still a bit irksome. Also, one of my bookshelves is absolutely covered in spare change. I have one small box to keep them in, but that's been full for several years already; the change continues to pile up on the shelves. I keep thinking of getting a change sorter, or even taking them to the nearby grocery store which has a machine that'll convert them to bills, but I never do (the only time I bother with the change is to gather quarters so I can get soda from the university's vending machines). I even have old toys from my childhood (and not so distant past); I was a big fan of LEGO blocks and also my action figures which I used to make up very elaborate stories for them to play out, even in my mid to late teens, and rather than dispose of them they take up space in my linen closet. A few years ago, I tried to rekindle my love of playing with those toys, but I couldn't really get into it, so they went back into the closet rather than being disposed of.

[Mr_Snow]

Books, although I wouldn't call those clutter.

all my old PC game box's on the otherhand....