Not all “hoarding” is the same. I am putting hoarding in quotation marks here because when I say hoarding in this post I am not referring to an actual hoarding disorder. Hoarding disorder is a real thing that should be taken seriously. In this case I am just referring to the normal tendency people have to surround themselves with stuff.
I have been finding as I spend time on the homemaking and lifestyle part of the internet that some people are almost obsessed with “minimalism.” Minimalism can be great. It can help reduce time spent on maintenance, organizing, and shopping. The problem is the more time I spend around this idea, the more I see that it can be taken to extremes. Recently I was going through a period in my life where I was avoiding buying anything because I was going to have to move soon so anything I bought would then have to either be discarded or transported halfway across the country. During that time I have gotten an appreciation for how useful it can be to have stuff around.
It’s not a bad thing to own things. It’s a bad thing when you get to the point where the things own you. However, having a few little “hoards” of things that don’t do much other than you want to have them can be okay. However, I appreciate the sentiment of not wanting to just have things thrown into a box where they become forgotten about. I have found that especially if you have a tendency to hoard things it can be useful to take things a step further and find a way to display that hoard artistically. The end result is that you (and often others) can enjoy those items better just because of how they are arranged. I call this “artistic hoarding” and whatever is created from it an, “artistic hoard.”
All it really takes for something to qualify as an “artistic hoard” in my mind is that:
- 1. It has to be a collection of things
- 2. There has to be some sort of thought put into how it’s arranged
- 3. there has to have been some creativity involved.
That’s it. I’m intentionally pretty loose with this concept since the point to me at least of giving it a name was because giving it a name helped me give myself permission to allow this to exist.
Common Examples
. Knick-Knack Shelves
A knick knack shelf this any sort of shelf with some variety that has knick-knacks on it. I would qualify a china display cabinet as one of these. It’s displaying a hoard of pretty plates. In general I think knick-knack shelves tend to be associated with grandparents’ houses, but there’s no reason why a younger person can’t have one. One of my sisters is really good at arranging these. These do tend to attract dust, so if that’s going to be an issue I recommend you go the china cabinet route and get something with glass doors than a more standard bookcase route.
Scrapbooks
Scrapbooks are basically my favorite form of artistic hoarding. Scrapbooks are basically just a hoard of photos and stationary. Since photos and stationery are some of my favorite things to hoard, I think these are great.
Scrapbooks are also closely related to other things like art journals, bullet journals, travel logs, etc. These often also work as a sort of “information hoard” as well. Part of the reason I’m so attached to my old journals is the information they carry about who I was at a previous time of my life and how I got to where I am now.
Memory T-Shirt Quilts
I think a lot of people have a tendency to get sentimentally attached to clothes. If you were like me you probably have collected a large hoard of T-shirts from extracurricular activities in school. One thing you can do with them is turn them into a quilt. While I consider this a difficult form of artistic hoarding (I actually dislike quilting) it does come with the advantage of being one of the most practical. If you are going to do this, I warn you that t-shirt material can be a bit difficult for quilting. My first attempt at one of these looks absolutely terrible. It is surprisingly cozy though, in spite of how terrible it looks, and it does allow me to keep all those memories together so I’m not terribly upset about it anymore, but it’s not something that I’m proud to show off. My second attempt went a lot better, though it’s still messy.
Why or Why Not Artistically Hoard?
The main disadvantage is that most artistic hoards take time and skill to create. You have to decide what’s actually worth turning into an art/display. It’s not practical to do it for everything you’ve collected. The point is to enjoy your stuff. If you are constantly thinking, “Oh, I should make a scrapbook out of those photos” or “I should make a quilt out of this pile of baby clothes” but you either wouldn’t enjoy doing so or simply do not currently have time/energy/resources at this moment, then you will probably just get you frustrated with yourself for not doing it. That frustration will suck your time/energy even worse and you still won’t be enjoying your stuff. At that point, you should either accept that artistic or not it’s your emotional comfort hoard and you want it, or get rid of it. Feeling like everything has to be art gets overwhelming fast. Be selective. What is worth it to YOU to display?
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