While recently browsing the nonfiction shelves at my local Denver Public Library branch, I saw a title that grabbed my attention.  The book, by Randy Frost and Gail Steketee, was titled Stuff.  Frost and Steketee are psychology professors who study compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things.  They are clinicians who’ve worked with hundreds of hoarders.  I thumbed through the volume and decided to check it out.  Stuff deals with the nature of compulsive hoarding disorder, possible causes, and its range of characteristics and behaviors.  Frost and Steketce offer numerous case studies of hoarders in all age groups, professions, education levels, and categories of hoarded items.  I was amazed at their stories, of homes and apartments so filled with debris it was impossible to navigate, of backyards literally filled with junk, used cars, lawnmowers, barrels, tools, boats, piles of wood.  Some hoarders are so protective of their possessions that visitors (if visitors are even allowed on their property) are not permitted to touch stuff.  Hoarding can begin during childhood, may be selective, like out-of-control collecting, of gadgets, books, or just about anything.  For hoarders, possessions provide comfort and an exaggerated sense of personal identity.  Apparently, there are about six million hoarders in the US, although I have no idea how Frost and Steketee came up with that number.  But there are millions out there suffering from a wide range of hoarding obsessions.

The word stuff has an interesting etymology.  According to Google, it’s derived from the Middle English stuffen (to equip, furnish), then borrowed from Old French estoffer, (to provide what is necessary, equip, stuff), later borrowed from Old High German stoffōn, from Proto-West Germanic stoppōn (to clog up, block, fill).  It’s one of those words with a long history and variety of usage:  She has a lot of stuff.  I’m stuffed.  You can stuff it!  The turkey has stuffing.  I have a lot of stuff to do.

We’ve all driven through neighborhoods and looked into open garages.  They’re easy to spot, spaces filled with boxes and large items with only a narrow path leading to the interior of the house.  My friend, Bart, described his aging parents to me some years ago.  They were depression era folks in their sunset years who saved everything from cereal boxes, to cardboard paper towel tubes, magazines, newspapers, junk mail, paper and plastic bags, and far too many other things to mention.  Their basement was filled with useless clutter when it flooded some months after they moved into assisted living.

I’ve known several hoarders over the years, each of a slightly different persuasion.  In one case, former neighbors rarely invited me or anyone to their house, an abode filled to the brim with antiques and collectables.  I remember having to enter from the back door since the front entry was blocked on the inside by a dresser.  Their garage housed a 1950s era Buick sedan surrounded by boxes of stuff.  The backyard was a spillover area littered with more items.  To make matters worse, they had several dogs and cats.  In another case, friends in California also collected antiques.  They were neat and organized, highly educated and professionally employed managers.  It was easy to get into their house, but hard to maneuver once inside.  Antique furniture filled every space.  I think they wanted to go into the retail antique business, but could they part with these cherished possessions?  I never found out.

I was once warned by some old grad school friends to exercise an open mind when visiting them.  I suspected the meaning of their concern because I already knew they lived in a messy world, but I was still shocked even before knocking on their front door.  The yard was filled with clutter.  Trees needed trimming, weeds were everywhere, junk littered open areas.  I’m sure frustrated neighbors shook their heads when passing the property.  I was appalled when I entered the house.  The first things I noticed were the dining room table and living room couch. The table contained a pile of papers and other debris, maybe a foot high—no exaggeration.  The couch had gaping holes with protruding knots of stuffing.  I tried not to look around, but my shock was probably hard to hide.  They were not hoarders like the antique collectors, but they could not dispose of anything, especially paper, bills, newspapers, work related documents, even trash. 

Years earlier, I had asked a grad school advisor to write a letter of recommendation for me in support of a potential petroleum company job.  I was anxious to get a position in the Oil Patch and hoped he would be prompt.  After weeks of frustration, I confronted him.  He admitted that the paperwork had been lost and said that his kitchen table was a mess.  The form may have landed there initially.  That didn’t surprise me.  He always did things at the last minute and lived a life of disorganization.  His office was always in disarray.  He never seemed to have time to print test questions on sheets of paper but usually wrote them out on a blackboard during class time as we waited impatiently for him to finish.  I found another professor to write the letter.

My wife, Jenni, and I were once asked to help some work friends move to a new home.  That was a mistake.  When we arrived at their old property, it became apparent they were hoarders.  I walked into their garage and noticed that the back wall contained a large bookshelf with hundreds of cookbooks.  Another wall was filled with shelves of canned and boxed foods, enough nonperishables to impress any devout Mormon.  It got much worse when we walked into the house.  They had not done anything to prepare for the move before we arrived.

When Jenni and I lived in Taos, we once visited acquaintances, two retired guys, an engineer and a high- school teacher, collectors of folk art, primarily small knickknack-sized items ranging from sculpted human forms to assembled objects, quilted textiles, and tiny dioramas.  Every available shelf in every room was filled with pottery, talismans, statues, or an array of carvings and practical objects. I’ve always wondered what happened to that collection.

Many people are just collectors, maybe seriously interested in stamps or coins, historical objects, beer cans, just about anything that can be amassed in quantity, a collector’s motivation and a touch of nostalgia.  These folks are not necessarily hoarders.  Two now-deceased friends of ours liked to collect souvenirs from trips, maybe a fragment of roof tile from a Minoan village, Paleo-Indian pottery, a piece of a Bronze Age sword.  This habit, particularly on a large scale, is destructive.  If a million tourists each stole a chunk of roof tile from a 5,000-year-old village, nothing would remain.  The stuff later sits in a box and lacks provenance.  It ultimately winds up in an estate sale or is trashed by adult children or executors. 

Minimalists reside at the other end of the Stuff spectrum.  An article in the New York Times in 2017 nicely summarized the conflicts associated with too much and too little.  The author, Jacoba Urist, described the lifestyle creed of minimalism as “the less you own, the happier you’ll be.  Pare it all down to the bare minimum and spend more time living than having”.  It’s about stepping off the consumer treadmill and simplifying.  But too much shedding can create discomfort, just like too much stuff can be oppressive.  Our possessions reflect our identities and are “manifestations of our memories”.  The article goes on to describe “post materialist” values, simplicity in lifestyle while still connecting with the things that make us happy.  The ideal answer, it seems, lies somewhere between the two end members.

Identity is clearly part of the mix.  I recall a conversation I once had with an unmarried middle-aged archeology professor from a university in Michigan.  We were talking shop when I asked her about retirement.  She thought about it, she said, but was afraid of the transition because her entire identity was tied to her career.  What would she do with herself during retirement?  That thought really scared her.  Her Stuff was her research and teaching, her personal library, her work.  I’ve known several geologists that fit that description.  In one instance, a US Geological Survey geologist, one of several, had more than 50 years of service.  He was close to 90 years old and a confirmed bachelor when I last saw him headed to his office assisted by a nurse, a woman slowly guiding him down the hall past my door as he shuffled forward on his walker.  He recently had surgery and wanted to get back to work. I just shook my head at the time because he was blocking young people from getting jobs with us.  He was still filling a slot, one that could have been occupied by a young college graduate with new ideas.  His office was filled with books, files, mementoes, maps, 50 years of memorabilia.  I think he died before filing for retirement.

I can recollect several hoarders at the US Geological Survey.  One scientist, an internationally known sedimentologist, had an office stuffed with books, maps, and files.  The walls were filled with book cases.  He was a prolific writer, had numerous publications, and was in demand for speaking engagements.  I can understand his need for easy access to books, but the library was nearby in an adjacent building.  To some extent, I can understand this behavior.  At one time in grad school, I had several thousand books and enough rocks to fill 40-50 boxes.  Another colleague was hyper-organized and kept everything from his research, every computer printout, map, analytical report, manuscript draft.  Neatly stacked, annotated banker’s boxes occupied most of his office.  Narrow pathways were used to navigate his space.  He was a well published scientist, but clearly a hoarder.

Geology is a science of collections—of fossils, rocks, photographs, photocopied publications, analyses.  It’s a material science based on collecting and analyzing samples.  But one can go too far.  The Geologic Division of the US Geological Survey in Denver had a storage area at the Federal Center for scientists to store their rock collections.  We each had one or more pallets of boxes filled with rock and mineral specimens from our various projects.  The older the geologist, the greater number of pallets.  By the time I retired at age 60, I had 2 pallets.  I knew some colleagues with 15-20 pallets.  I periodically culled my pallets and saved only a few rocks important to a completed project.  Some geologists retired and forgot about their pallets or just unexpectedly died before retirement.  On one occasion, a safety officer walked through the storage area with a Geiger counter.  Several pallets soon disappeared!

Like most kids, I started collecting early.  I saved my assembled model ships and airplanes, and soon added postage stamps, jigsaw puzzles, comic books, old postcards, matchbook covers, and rocks and fossils.  The model ships didn’t last long.  At some point, my pyromaniacal instincts led me to load the plastic ship models with CO2 capsules, wads of paper, firecrackers, and gasoline.  I floated the volatile craft in the Fox River after lighting a fuse and waited for the conflagration. 

My philatelic interests lasted much longer, actually well into adulthood.  I often squandered my allowance on approvals from Garcelon Stamp Company.  I received a once-a-month envelope with approvals, stamps I could purchase or return.  I saved cancelled envelopes with interesting commemorative stamps, first day covers, and numbered plate blocks.  The demise of my hobby occurred when (1) I discovered that post WW-II commemoratives were worth 80 percent of face value, and (2) self-adhesive stamps were introduced.  I started using much of my collection as postage.  I’m sure friends were baffled when they received a Christmas or birthday card with six or seven vintage commemoratives totaling the required postage.  Stamps retain their face value indefinitely.  Non-lick self-adhesive stamps are another matter.  I still have several boxes and albums of philatelic collectables, but the contents now fill a single shelf in my office, hardly the culmination of a hoarding event. 

At one point early in my geologic career, I was encouraged to collect counties, an experiential rather than tangible pursuit.  Geologists travel extensively and often drive through numerous counties.  I was given a county map of the U.S. and told the simple rules.  Drive, walk, cycle, or crawl into a new county, then color it in on your map.  Now, years later, I’ve collected more than 2,000 counties.  My entire collection takes up a single slot in my map rack, but my brain is full of my travel collections.  I know at least one acquaintance, a hoarder of counties, who has collected every one—all 3041 of them.  He has gone on to collect national parks and cities over 100,000.  

I’m sitting at my desk this morning perusing my office, first staring at my old Zenith tube radio, then my Micky Mouse table lamp and several book cases filled with an eclectic array of stuff.  I’ve decided I’m not a hoarder, but a collector of favorite things from my past and present.  I still have a few hundred remaining geology books and published papers, most of which I use for part time teaching adventures. One book shelf contains antiquarian earth science books including an 1868 edition of Dana’s Textbook of Geology.  My remaining collections: postage stamps, postcards, photographs, favorite rocks, a peanut vending machine, several Uzbeki Tubeteikas, various maps, and an Official Field Camp US Geological Survey sign are nearby.  The word Official on the sign is misspelled as offical.  My walls are covered in maps, art pieces, framed photographs, and a mounted printer’s tray containing tiny memorabilia from my childhood, various travels, and career experiences.  My most cherished item on the tray is a high caliber bullet with a string attached to a short note that reads:  Ted- Here is a bullet to bite when things are tough. It was signed by Fitz, a long-gone friend from years past.