on hoarding

For many years – nay, for the entire time I knew him – I considered my father to be a hoarder of goods, not necessarily clinically-obsessive, but more along the lines of a pack-rat. Born in New York City in 1934, his childhood was likely shaped by the shortages and scarcity that so greatly plagued America while she was fighting the German and Japanese Empires; he learned from an early age the need to pick up and store all items of even the slightest utilitarian or financial value, that eleven dimes had to be squeezed out of every dollar, and that such things as could be, would be reused, reworked, and recycled.

And so it was throughout my childhood that I grew up in a household in which broken things were often jury-rigged until they once again worked, in which random nuts and loose bolts were stored in plastic containers just in case they might be needed someday, in which all options were exhausted before one fired up the car and drove to the hardware store. And, so, I am not surprised when I catch myself retrieving stray things-of-worth from busy roadways, waiting for traffic to subside before dashing out to retrieve a somewhat rusty pair of wire-snips or a ½-inch metal hose clamp, items that I refurbish, reuse, or store away.

Until recently, I did not however act in this fashion, preferring the now-standard path that many Americans seem to take of throwing out most everything – even items in perfectly good working condition – certain that, tomorrow, when they actually do need them, they will have enough money to buy brand-new, Chinese-made replacement items (which, especially with specialty items, may be available only when the shop opens in the morning). Until my eyes were re-opened recently to the enormous value of such things as with which my deceased father filled this dacha's basement and out-buildings, I too thought of those things as trash, as superfluous goods, as six decades worth of proof that hoarding was a bad thing. Now, however, after mowing this property's acres with a muscle-powered, cast-iron push-mower, and after spending the last eight months moving my body through space-time on a bicycle (and, incidentally, after hewing more closely to the teachings of Lao Tzu), I find that my estimation of what I once thought of as clutter has changed dramatically.

For example, the pile of old magazines that has sat on a shelf in the barn for the last twenty years turned out to be a few dozen, successive copies of Organic Gardening magazine; since starting to read them, my appreciation for and knowledge of Nature-friendly, low-impact methods for growing edible and pretty things has grown substantially, much as have the crops in my gardens. Also, the various medium-scale farming and landscaping devices that have been hanging around collecting dust all these years turned out to be exactly the types of things one would need to turn this property's best south-facing slope into a productive field, whereupon might grow fuel to run engines, fibers to clothe bodies, and food to fill stomachs. Furthermore, the bamboo that has grown here in abundance after my dad shoved a single shoot of it into the ground in the late 1970s is a plant whose utility knows few bounds; add to these blessings the many fruit and firewood trees that have been allowed to grow as tall as they wanted to grow, and this oddly-shaped little chunk of land fast resembles a perfect place for self-sufficient living. Perfect, that is, for an able-bodied yet otherwise worthless individual looking to make use of piles of heaped-up clutter, such as myself. So, if there is any moral lesson to this article, it is that viewing things from within different frames of mind can often reveal their hidden, secret worth. So open those peepers, elasticize the mind, and keep that head on a swivel. Mahalo.

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