Stuff Collections Objects Possessions

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I voted about a roomful of stuff.

What place do objects have in your life?
Uuuh... I don't know. D:

How attached are you to them?
I am attached to some, (mostly the ones I use most often) but not many.

Are they "on display"/in use most of the time? Or are they hoarded, piled up, put away, unused, but somehow "precious"?
Not hoarded, just "stocked up". XD; (No, really.)
Most of my stuff gets used pretty regularly I guess. (Some is seasonal of course.) I just re-organized my whole apartment (my and my BF's stuff) so everything is easy to access, so nothing is just gathering dust at the back of the closet.

Do you collect "rubbish" ( empty boxes/bottles/tubs/pots/packets/wrappers etc )?
I have a big drawer for that. (and spots in the kitchen for extra jars/containers) It's stuff that I think will come in handy, and often it does. And if I get too many of one thing, I get rid of some of the least good ones.

Do you have big, or small, "collections" of things? How many different collections?
I only have collections of small things, so I can collect them without taking up space. I guess I have a half dozen little collections. (Not counting practical/useful collections.)

Do you throw stuff out regularly, and/or exchange/trade-up? Or do you keep almost everything you have ever bought, found, or been given?
I get rid of stuff whenever I clean out a closet and find things I didn't know I had, or never use. I upgrade whenever something breaks or when I find something significantly more efficient.

Have you always been the same way about possessions/objects?
No, I used to keep everything, but when I started moving a lot and living in smaller spaces, (during college) I realized the drawbacks and made it my goal to be efficient, instead of what it used to be, which was to keep everything. XD;

Do your collections/possessions make you feel happy? Anxious? Burdened?
I have about one suitcase worth of stuff that really makes me happy. The rest sometimes feels a little like a burden, but a lot of it is useful so it's okay. But if it ever stops being useful I'll get rid of it.

My father saved empty toilet paper rolls. He saved every check he ever wrote (they used to be sent back by the bank). Once when I was visiting I found a brown paper grocery bag full of those rectangles of lint from the dryer. He had hundreds of empty beer cans in the garage from a co-worker who drank. He was going to make his own siding. He never did. An unusual guy, my dad.

I'm 18 and I'm being loose with what is "Mine"; the reusable holiday trees, some things I like, etc. so

Hmm--that's an interesting distinction between me and my dad. He will throw away the *physical* item (like a store receipt, after he's recorded the transaction in a notebook), or a box.

I'll keep the receipt and box. I do throw empty TP cores out, however. They usually are sticky, and I can't abide that. I did save a nice heavy-duty mailing tube about 10 years ago (it's still sitting on the floor in my living room, next to a daisy-wheel printer that was last used in 1997), because i thought it would make a nice steamroller someday...

In D.O.D.'s defense (that's dear old dad) when we asked him about the dryer lint he said he was going to try to make paper. He was always learning something.

Okay, I can understand that. I used to collect those purple spirit-master carbons as a kid (when I could get away with scrounging them from the teachers' wastebaskets without getting caught), always trying to make "practical dittos" at home.

Alas, isopropyl alcohol was a poor substitute for that delightful A.B. Dick spirit-master fluid.

I was just getting the hang of throwing away receipts....it was just a matter of deciding whether or not each receipt was still potentially useful for returns under warranty or buyer's remorse.....then they started putting my bank details on them, and we got the scare stories about crooks fishing them out of your trash and stealing your identity. So now I save up the useless ones for a year and then burn them.

That sounds great. And ( I think ) I know what you mean.



I am afraid that something which occurred to me is that if being on the spectrum is hereditary there may be something in the refridgerator mother effect after all, and the mother who is on or near the spectrum may be making the expression and experience of need even more complicated for their AS child, by resisting, withdrawing, overreacting, showing anxiety or confusion, etc in the face of their child's needs which will make it much harder for a child to learn the "rules" about it, so that prefer to simplify things by routinely/systematically ignoring "need" signals/symptoms, until no longer know what one needs, and fill up on objects like someone who has no idea when or if they're hungry may regularly eat junk food in a mindless sort of way, ( it puts a stop to the "painful" feelings ).

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I collect random things.
Potato chip bags

Toilet paper rolls

I like the idea of having an excess amount of the same type of object, with slight variations.

My main collection, to which I attach a lot of importance, is my books collection, but I don't have a big one because I rarely have money to buy my own books. I have attachments to most of the objects I own, but I don't hoard stuff.

I collect clothes (not in an organised manner though), usually because I like their fabric - the colours or texture. I have had some of my clothes for over fifteen years.

I used to collect teapots. I still have some, but sadly started moving around so gave up collecting.
This pales in comparison to my aunt who has literally a house full of vases in every available space. She was my original inspiration years ago.
I also value books and various other objects and tend to collect things for the sake of it, or for their perceived aesthetic value. I am not very practical and do not tend to collect things for usefulness at all.

In fact, in recent times I have been trying to have a lot less stuff. I have been finding my stuff stressful.

my theory is that because the amount of stuff I enjoy collecting is more, in proportion, than the amount of time I enjoy spending on housework and cleaning, I am therefore messy (and unorthodox).

As I recently started thinking about being tidy, I realised that more stuff means more cleaning and since I hate cleaning (what is the biggest waste of time but thinking about or regarding DIRT?) I therefore now desire to have very little possessions.

I had a garage sale and have begun ruthlessly throwing things away - up to a garbage bin per week. Several tip runs too.

This is hard for me. One of my earliest memories in life is when a pair of my sandals got so worn they were thrown away - it made me feel like crying. I just felt like the sandals had been so loyal and now they were just getting thrown away, discarded as if they were no good, when they had been good. They had character by that time, I suppose.

my life has been relatively unsettled; in terms of collecting things I really cannot try at all unless and until I achieve a different kind of stability (own a large home with easy cleaning routines!! )