I’ve been thinking about stuff a lot lately. Not “stuff” as in philosophical musings on the human condition, the meaning of existence, etc. I mean the stuff we keep in boxes, packed into closets and attics and basements. Admittedly, the two do intersect a fair amount.
Last week I began wading through 15 or so big plastic boxes of stuff I’d left in DC when I moved to Los Angeles last year. Having lived happily without it for months, I wondered what in the world I could have left behind that would take up that much space. If I hadn’t even thought about all that stuff for a whole year, how could it possibly be important? If stuff sits in a basement, with no one to look at it, does it really exist?
I resolved to go through all the boxes and toss as much stuff as I could, saving myself the expense of shipping it to LA. Maybe I should have just thrown it out without looking, as half of it I’d probably never have remembered owning in the first place. But of course, once I started going through everything, memories were jogged, nostalgia kicked in, and the “keep” pile kept growing while the “toss” pile languished, a tiny molehill next to a burgeoning mountain.
Here are some of the things I felt compelled to save. I’m curious: Do the rest of you keep these types of things too? Or am I the lone weirdo hoarder, lugging boxes around from house to house, looking at their contents only when it’s time to move again?
- College papers (not too many, just a sampling)
- Old letters from pre-email days
- Birthday and Valentine’s Day cards from exes
- Christmas “photo cards” of my nieces and nephews; any handmade card they’ve given me
- Magazines / newspapers covering big events: 9/11, Princess Diana’s death, the fall of the Soviet Union
- Envelopes full of unsorted photo negatives
- Old political memorabilia: Clinton-Gore buttons, Gore-Lieberman bumper stickers
- Brochures / memos / curiosities from old jobs
- Old laptops
Am I just borderline packrat-syndrome-neurotic? Or are these normal things to save? I suspect most people who save a lot of stuff do so simply because they have room to store it. It’s easy not to weed out stuff if you don’t have to, after all. But I don’t have a lot of room, and don’t know when I will, if ever. Does it make sense for me to continue lugging this stuff around, even as important as it has been at one time or another in my life?
I read an interesting tip in O, or Martha Stewart Living, or another of those magazines one picks up at the dentist’s office. It said: If you’re keeping a bunch of stuff you don’t really need and don’t have room for, hoarding it just because it’s got sentimental value, then take these steps: Photograph it. Then chuck it. It’s a lot easier to save images, especially in this digital age, than it is to save things.
I took this advice, at least for a few things. For years, I’ve been keeping a stash of beloved t-shirts — ones I wore for years, or on memorable travels, or that commemorate big events in my life. I had a whole duffel bag full of them, never intending to wear them again, but just keeping them with me like talismans.
This time around, I finally got the courage to photograph them and bid them farewell — to the garbage if they were unwearable, to Goodwill if not. Herewith, a gallery of the best:
Alien Backs Clinton! A classic 1992 cover from the Weekly World News. A gift from my beloved uncle, and occasional TGW commenter, Red Dog.
A giant t-shirt from South of the Border, the fabulously kitschy rest stop / gas station / amusement area at the border between South Carolina and North Carolina. We passed this several times every year when I was growing up, driving between my grandparents’ houses.
My absolute favorite t-shirt in college: Boris and Natasha. I wore it to graduation, with a billowy calf-length cotton skirt and sandals. I thought my grandmother would never speak to me again.
The Organization of Lesbians and Gays of America — OLGA. The official t-shirt of the gay and lesbian Russian-speakers club I belonged to in the early ’90s.
Milly’s Orchid Show — a performance art persona by Brigid Murphy, dubbed by one writer a “vaudeville-meets-Grand-Ole-Opry extravaganza.” I saw her in the early ’90s at PS 122 in the East Village.
Phranc’s Brief Encounter — an art project by the fabulous Phranc, an “All-American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger” who sold Tupperware by day.
Okay, I admit, I couldn’t actually get rid of those last two shirts. See how hard it is to weed stuff out?
I admit. Your list reads like the labels on all the bins in our closets. We have all of those things too. In particular, I have every letter I’ve ever received from *anyone*. I’ve even contemplated at times asking exes and other friends to give me back my old letters if they’re tempted to throw them out. I imagine this comes of reading footnotes in a bunch of biographies of JRR Tolkein when I was in junior high. And I still feel this way about letters, especially now that they hardly exist any more: if you find a bunch of old letters in your dead great-aunt’s attic, donate them to the local college library! Even if you think they’re uninteresting.
As for t-shirts: Stephanie converted some of my old ones into a quilt several years back, and there’s still a huge box of 80s concert t-shirts in her parents’ basement awaiting similar treatment. Though now maybe it would be cool to break some of them out. I hope they’ve preserved well. My only fear is that back then I wore t-shirts in much larger sizes than I would now.
When I saw that Milly’s shirt I thought — “Oh, no! Molly would have loved that!”
So did you fit everything in suitcases or did you ship?
That Boris and Natasha tee is awesome — very nice side-by-side with the OЛГA logo. I think for cool stuff like this the ideal thing is to either sell it at a garage sale, or donate to a thrift shop — it’s much better for it to be out in the world exposed to people’s eyes, than sitting in a box in my attic or cellar or at the bottom of a drawer, never being worn. Ideally, the same would go for old records I no longer listen to/books I will never reread; but I will plead guilty to keeping a substantial number of those on hand. (I’m clear on the “hoarding cool clothing” point because I refuse on principle to own stylish or attractive clothing…)
BW’s right. We all keep stuff. The T-Shirt-to-quilt idea is great: in High School, I wore Harley Davidson t-shirts exclusively, and by the time I reached 20 or so, I amassed a collection of around 32 black, licensed H-D shirts. They’re now a large quilt that I use for picnicing and moving. I also like to (very occasionally) collect a bunch of little odds and ends of stuff from a particular period into a scrapbook. This helps condense the mountain of pins, stickers, photos, newspaper clippings, poems on bar napkins, concert and movie tickets, etc., etc. into a smallish, portable, and relatively organized space. I have one of these from High School and one for 18-21, both about 6″ by 9″notebooks that I clued or taped stuff into. The scrapbook-making process is time-consuming, but rewarding, cleansing, cathartic. Since then, I’ve stopped saving napkins and other stuff. All that languishes on hard disk these days. (I wonder if we’ll ever think about all that stuff piling up on hard disks?)
I’m guilty of lugging around unused art supplies: big buckets of oil and acrylic paint & brushes, several half-used gallons of gesso and other primers, a large tool box filled-to-bursting with pencils, erasers, rulers, sharpeners, etc., stacks of unused paper, canvas, and panel, etc. I haven’t painted much in the last couple of years—too busy being an art historian—but I’ll keep lugging the stuff around. Maybe one day I’ll have the time and space to set up a studio, or even the time to spread a dropcloth on the living room floor and fling some paint around. No sentimental value here, no real practical value either. I just like knowing that, with about an hour of preparation, I could start painting at any time.
LP, these great photos reminded me of the old Carlin observation, “you ever notice that everyone else’s stuff is shit but that all of your shit is stuff?”
So rm, is it the height of self-awareness when one comes to realize that one’s own stuff is also shit?
I was much happier with my state of stuffness when there was a lot less of it. I do have to admit, however, that I’ve developed a real problem with shoes.
The T-Shirt-to-quilt idea is great
Absolutely — this is a great way to ensure this stuff continues to serve its purpose of pleasing eyes.
I wore Harley Davidson t-shirts exclusively
That’s funny, just this morning I was reading a passage in Lush Life by Richard Price, describing a shrine to a murder victim on the Lower East Side — the shrine had been decimated by bad weather and passing vandals, the only memento still present and undamaged was a black, licensed H-D tee-shirt.
scott, i guess the (more pleasant) corollary would be your realization that other people’s stuff might be just that.
triplet guy alert: my mom always kind of weirded me out with the whole “we’ll save this for your kids” idea when i was a but a child myself but i recently had a huge payoff of sorts-in going through an old bag of clothes i found (sorry, about my lack of photo-to-web skills, as this baby is almost worth it) my elementary school t-shirt circa 1976 complete with polyester red white and blue flag motif inserts on the sleeves. wow-now my brood can represent when they walk in to kndergarten (although they’ll probably just be representing what nuts their grandmother and father are).
I’ve got the same boxes as well. I refer to them as my archives. Maybe they don’t mean much now, but when I’m Big and Important they will be invaluable.
I had a great chance to sort through them several years ago when I got divorced (they may or may not have been a contributing factor in said divorce). I moved from Boston to Seattle and could only take what would fit in the car. Gone were the three pairs of golf clubs, two of which I had never used. Gone were the old books and cds that I carried just because I’d had them since high school. Gone were most the power tools and odds and ends that might’ve come in handy one day.
I still had a shit-load I took with, but it was great to winnow it down a bit. I wish I’d heard about the idea to take photographs. Probably wouldn’t have helped though…she got the camera.
I’m of the avoidance school when it comes to getting rid of stuff (aka shit). A few years ago I finally tossed the last of the plastic dinosaurs I bought one time when I was drunk in college. They’d only traveled, oh, a few thousand miles with me, from Chicago to Virginia to San Francisco to Santa Barbara to Minnesota to . . . I wish I had taken pictures of them.
One of these days I’ll clear it all out like Hercules did with the Augean Stables. Still, though, you can’t have my record collection until you can pry it from my cold, dead hands.
As to old t-shirts, here’s a way to make underwear out of them. Just think! You could have had Clinton receiving the Alien’s endorsement on your derriere.
I like thinking about Parrish’s derriere.
I save everything. It’s all classified as ‘research material’ at my studio. And I have the comic book convention equivalent of a doctorate in t-shirt hoarding. I mean, they were free, and had cool art…and…and…
10: But do you like thinking about an alien on my derriere? Because that would be, you know, weird.
BW: I LOVE the quilt idea. And thank you for making me feel normal re: the saved letters. I just can’t bear the idea of letting them go — they’re a capsule of a lost time!
Also, the Milly shirt is in Brian and Andrea’s basement, but next time I go to DC I’ll stick it in the mail for Molly. It will be huge on her, but it’s a great shirt.
Other James: A quilt made entirely of black H-D t-shirts!! This is inspired. And apparently they never wear out.
T-Wag: WHAT?! You threw out the dinosaurs!!?
Just kidding.
I am going to make John read this post, because he is a closet-hoarder. (ha! closet-hoarder…) I love getting rid of stuff (and have sometimes regretted it).
And, um, if you’re not wanting it anymore…can I have the Olga tee?
LT: It’s stained and a little ratty, and you will swim in it, you skinny minnie, but it is yours! It’s in the pile to go to Goodwill, but not gone yet!
You know, maybe we should have a TGW t-shirt swap. Everybody post photos of t-shirts you don’t wear anymore, and we swap ‘em all around. Whatever’s left over goes to RM’s kids.
Honey, I’ve seen you with an unidentified flying butt, so it wouldn’t be that weird.
Oh! Godfree.
that’s what she said
ok, now you guys have me thinking of others wearing some of these t-shirts.
for me it might equal nostalgia and once fervent identification, for someone else a potential goldmine of ironic cool, for another merely something to keep warm in or even wash the car with.
i’m always taken with those stories after big sporting events that detail how the losing team’s shirts-that have to be made up just in case they win that seventh game and can be immediately worn in the locker room as they’re being doused with champange-end up being donated overseas. picture children in africa proudly and obliviously sporting their brand new shiny “buffalo bills nfl champs” shirts and caps.
it got me to thinking about all of the alternate universes/misinformation that people can imply from t-shirts. i don’t know if i would want to consign someone else to some of my golden oldies (the cathouse, anyone?) but then again it would be fun to see what they (re)make of them.
but please, no diapers…unless of course we’re talking about actual hand me down diapers from back in the day.
19: my friend Paul Dini (who did a bunch of the cool Warner Brothers cartoons over the last decade) was approached by someone recently who started gushing about how he was “the master of story”. The fan went on an on about how Paul was indispensible to modern animation, then shook his hand and walked away.
Paul felt about ten feet tall - until he saw his reflection in a door, and realized he was wearing a TOY STORY t-shirt - and he realized the fan thought he was John Lasseter.
I have several bags of cassette tapes - every couple of years I start the Listening To And Weeding Out Old Cassette Tapes project but get weary after about 3 or 4. A lot of them are unmarked (of course) and several of them have projects that I recorded on an old 4-track cassette recorder, so they can’t be played back on a normal tape deck. Somehow I’ve convinced myself that someday, i’ll get ahold of another 4-track and I’ll find a brilliant song that otherwise would’ve been forever lost. For the ones that are worth throwing out, my other excuse is that someday I’ll need a cassette tape to record over and so these will come in handy.
our library just bought thousands of taped live shows from the downtown scene in the 70s. they were part of a collection that was soon to be subject to divorce proceedings. although most will never be released (licensing problems) they will be available to researchers. can you imagine if someone had thrown them out or they’d been lost in the divorce?
ps jen — my own cassettes (and my comic books) are also in stephanie’s parents’ basement. i should dig all that crap out this summer and figure out what to do with it.
the stuff i had left behind at my own parents’ house all got picked over by my younger siblings. my youngest brother (a sometime contributor here whose pseud i will protect) even found some old poetry notebooks and set some of them to pop tunes. oy! i thought i had packed all that stuff safely along with me. should i confess i have items in my office filing cabinet that were written when i was 14 or 15?
BW - omg - burn it! Or maybe not - perhaps we should have a Greatwhatsit Mortified reading….
I feel tempted to offer to alter those T-shirts that are too huge for the next wearer, since I think it’s really easy and I’ve got the sewing machine and the time…
This reminds me of one of Pandora’s posts; she and I ship around the same types of stuff. Everything else, we get rid of freely by donating to thrift stores (mainly the DI), freecycling, and eBaying. I think the only things I cull less freely are things I think I’ll use in the future: toys in one tupperware crate that future children will; enjoy, a dish set that will be handy with said kids…And none of this stuff is hoard-worthy like all his stuff you’re talking about.
Each of us have old drawings/writings opf our childhoods, but we both feel like those ought to be saved as proof that we were kids once. None of it goes to excess, and it’s all highly organized. Plus, I have a dad who, for some weird reason, doesn’t want me keeping any of my old stuff at his house. No old books that they’d use more than I, no old costume jewelry that a sister might use. So I don’t really have a basement resource. My hubby, on the other hand, is an only child: he’s got the looming project of cleaning out a whole bee/rat-infested shed full of his old stuff. Blech.
that list seemed pretty reasonable.
except for the photo negatives
and the old lap tops