“Historic preservation is the ultimate recycling.”

I saw this quote on a bumper sticker once and, while I don’t generally take life advice from dogmatic sayings on cars, it stuck with me.

I love to find interesting convergences of seemingly unrelated things that somehow make sense in life when they’re jumbled all together at once.

I’ve been watching a lot of the TV show Hoarders. As a general observation I have heard a lot of comments on the show about people who have become hoarders being children of the Great Depression in one way or another. Either they themselves grew up in it or their parents did.

Let me tell you. One day-long binge of nothing but an entire season Hoarders is intense motivation to get rid of all of the shit in your life. That said, this weekend we are having a yard sale. LOL

In picking through everything we own looking for stuff that has no emotional value, little to no physical value (to us) and items that we feel are junkin’ up our bungalow I noticed a theme to many of the items I felt grossly inclined to retain: vintage/old items that were crafted WELL before I was even a thought.

A lot of the stuff we’re getting rid of are newer things, surprisingly. Well, I’m not ALL that surprised. The quality of the items made these days has declined so things that are 40 years old are still at the same, if not better, quality as the things manufactured 5 years ago that have a much shorter lifespan because they aren’t built to last.

Back to hoarding, the Great Depression, bumper stickers and my own fetish of cherishing old stuff.

In this day in age, I feel like everything in my material life is disposable. It’s JUST.STUFF. But why then, do I love having a Jetson’s looking midcentury Danish modern coffee table that used to be my grandmas? Why do I choose to keep a fugly red-grape velvet chair from the early 1960′s? Because they last longer. The IKEA couch I’m on right now doesn’t stand a chance at lasting 50+ years.

So the statement I’m making is this:

1) Millennials need to watch out that they don’t become hoarders and it needs to be monitored closely. Everything is available and with the pairing of disposable material items and economic hardship similar to the Great Depression, Gen Y is already pre-disposed to being hoardalicious.

2) Gen Y is going to be most inclined to retain functional items over a longer amount of time because of the coinciding elements of over-connectedness to parents (so when they’re gone the kids will hold onto their things) and the desire to be green giving way to an unwillingness to dispose of things if they aren’t 100% perfect or in need of minor repair.

Moral of the story: Pick the things you hoard with care and don’t let it get out of control.

My friend Olga says it best: ”I know exactly what you’re talking about, I did the SAME thing after watching that show! They’re only things! It’s like you end up with so many things that you can’t enjoy your things!”

LOL