Top nine reasons we keep stuff: things represent us
This is another article in a series exploring the top reasons we keep stuff, according to David Ekerdt, professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas. Dr. Ekerdt has spent his career interviewing and studying people, digging into their attachment to their belongings and trying to understand why we love our things so much. He developed this list of the top reasons we keep things:
It seems useful.
We think it is worth money.
It gives us pleasure.
It represents us.
We may need it one day.
It was a gift.
Conservation is a virtue.
Legacy – we want to leave things to people when we die.
We keep because we can.
In this post I am exploring this idea that we keep things because they represent us.
If you love to travel, you may have mementos from your travels displayed in your home. Joe and I have a very cool small poster from a trip to Morocco in our bedroom. I love this poster because it instantly brings me back to wandering in the maze of markets in Marrakech. I can even taste the hot mint tea we had later that afternoon.
If you play golf, you may have a golf ball on a shelf from an eagle you hit twenty years ago. If you’re a musician, there’s a good chance you have some guitars on display. Each one of these things represents you and should make you happy. It is a short cut to a happy or proud memory you have tucked away and when you bring a new guest into your home this memento can provide a pleasant source of conversation and a way to get to know someone better.
This is all great and we encourage you to keep these kinds of things in your home – as long as they make you happy. But there comes a point where these things can cross a line from being something positive to being something of a burden.
We moved a couple into a lovely Manhattan residence a number of years ago. The wife had dementia and her husband, Herb, had found he could no longer take care of her on his own. From my first phone call with Herb, he talked about how his wife was “a bit of a hoarder” and wouldn’t let go of anything. This was making the move pretty stressful for Herb.
But when I met them at their home the first time, the plot thickened a little. His wife was on the hoarding spectrum and had an overly strong attachment to a wide variety of things, but Herb’s belongings actually took up much more space in their home. Herb, who was 92 at the time, had built a successful career as a financial advisor and accountant. He still had two clients and kept telling me, proudly, that he was still in business, but, even though he only had two clients remaining, he had kept files for all of his clients. And he intended to move every single file to their new, small, senior residence.
I gently suggested that, before the move, someone on our staff spend some afternoons sorting the files with him, and shredding files pertaining to former clients. Herb looked at me like I had two heads. This was simply out of the question. In fact, he planned to purchase more file cabinets so he could properly organize all these files, which were presently bulging out of the cabinets.
I realized that these files were more than just papers to Herb. They were proof that he had built a successful practice. They were evidence that the 92-year-old man standing in front of me had once been a trusted advisor to hundreds of people. So, we moved them. But we moved them at the expense of furniture and decorative things that would make both Herb and his wife happy.
We have had a number of clients who are artists. If an artist has plenty of room, they can keep as many supplies and works of art as they like. Or if they live alone and want to be surrounded by art and supplies, they have every right to live like this. But we have had a few clients who are married, with limited space in their apartments, who insist on keeping everything related to their art. If you ask them to cull down their art supplies, they will tell you that it is impossible because their art defines them.
We have also had a lot of clients with pianos, a topic that really upsets us all at Paper Moon Moves. It hurts because there is very little market for used pianos. Many people from older generations bought them, but very few people from younger generations want them.
When I met Chris and her daughter and saw Chris’ piano, my heart instantly sank. Chris had played for years and everyone in the family loved to hear her. Chris now had mild dementia and was moving to Massachusetts to be near her daughter.
I gently asked if she hoped to move the piano to her new, small, assisted living apartment. But Chris immediately said that I shouldn’t worry – she didn’t need to move the piano. She ran to the other room and returned with a guitar. “I used to be a pianist, but now I’m a guitarist” she announced. She had just taken it up – at age 85 and with dementia – because the piano didn’t work in her new life. I loved that she did this, and I hope she’s strumming away right now in her new apartment.
Things represent us. This can be a great reason to keep things. But we need to make sure that we don’t let the things overtake us. Our identities are stronger than our possessions. Herb helped dozens of people navigate their finances. This is true, regardless of the whether he still had the files in his apartment.
Chris was a musical person. And she didn’t allow that to be defined by her piano. So when the time came to part with her piano, she picked up a smaller, portable instrument. She was allowing her identity to help her find a new interest. This is hard to do, especially as we age, but worth striving for.
As with all our possessions, the ones we keep because they somehow represent us can be positives or negatives in our lives. It really comes down to how many of these things you are keeping and whether you can comfortably keep them all. It can be easy to fall into the kind of thinking Herb had, that every single one of the client files was important. The important thing is to have regular conversations with yourself about why you feel so strongly about keeping something.
