A recent article in Psychology Today online, published by Gillian Ragsdale Ph.D
Hoarding and Empathy talks about emotional attachments to the things we humans collect.
The question is raised about the healthy and useful limits of such behavior, and where the line is drawn between too little, enough, and too much.
quote:
Do you subscribe to William Morris’s golden rule: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful? Or do you love your stuffevery useless, ugly bit of it?
My Mom is now almost 92, and my sister and i have been cleaning up Moms excess stuff. It is a tedious emotional process. Not only must we find room for some of it, we must find room in our own homes for it which means we need to shed our own excess stuff. Just deciding who gets what, what gets thrown away or given to another is very emotional.
Anxiety is involved, as it is hard to name the emotions connected with all of this nonsense. Some will be sold, of course---thats easier. Some given away. The rest gets divided with the family...eventually. Mom has fortunately made her wish lists and has very little emotional stake in all of this, thankfully for her health's sake.
Do any of you find that not only is one mans junk another mans treasure, but that you have emotional connections to your own piles of junk?
God created war so that Americans would learn geography. —Mark Twain
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain