When your collection becomes clutter

Many people go lifetimes collecting shot glasses and displaying them without ever thinking or feeling like they have a cluttered collection or home.

If you are one of those people, then rock on.

But before I let you off the hook completely, note that clutter can cost you money & sanity as well.

You have clutter that takes up precious square footage

No one ever seems to have an apartment or home big enough, am I right?

If you are paying $2000 a month for rent, for a 1000 square foot home the calculation is:

$2000 / 1000 square feet = $2/square foot

Then you may decide you need a bigger home or apartment

Which means you will have to pay for:

• Realtor costs to sell your home
• Moving costs
• A brand new mortgage
• New furniture for your new digs (backyard and garage included!)
• Possible maintenance on your new home (painting the walls, tearing out the kitchen)
• And maybe a new car to get to your new home, as there aren’t any buses

Not only that, you are paying in time to go search for a home, meet with a mortgage lender to figure out how much you can get to buy said home, and are ever more aware of how much you must keep your job to pay for the home.

You may be subconsciously stressed or guilty about your collection

This can affect your personal life (marriage, perhaps?), career (you come into work more fatigued than you should be), and just general unneeded stress.

You may want to keep buying more items for your collection

Those things can be a never ending cycle of constant purchases and worry about making sure your collection is as full, and as complete as it can be.

You may be putting money into items without any resale value

Collector’s Plates, anyone?

If you love collecting, then by all means do it.. but be aware of the financial costs of collections, and its resale value as well, which may be 0.

Just because you love collecting those plates at $100 a pop, doesn’t mean your children will want to keep the collection later, which means they’ll probably end up selling it or worse, dumping it!

Did that help any?

If not, it clearly makes you happy as a clam, so stick to what you’re doing.

There’s no need to change just because you FEEL as though you should.

However, if you are the person who just woke up one day, wandered into a room, thought “I need to clean this junk up”, and realized you were referring to your collection, then keep reading.

Waste Not Want Not Installation @ the MOMA by Song Dong

Define when it has turned into clutter for you and perhaps, why

If your collection starts making you stressed out, then it has turned into clutter for you.

If you start tripping or wondering why the heck you have so many collectible toy cars all over the place, then it has turned into clutter for you.

That’s not to say you should just scrap your life’s work, but rather, to acknowledge the fact that to turn your clutter back into a collection, it needs to be reined in.

Stat.

Take a picture to get some perspective

This is a step that many of you may decide to skip thinking it’s a waste of time, but especially if you have a digital camera, I strongly encourage you to give it a shot to see whether this will work for you.

Take a picture of your clutterlection (clutter + collection)

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