I Want It All, I Want It All, I Want It All, And I Want It Now

The mental health status of this collector... yeah that's the subtitle. This is a self analysis essay.

With the exception of my mom, who lives in a house that feels like a cross between a Class 10000 clean room and a museum, most of every single human being on the planet, are hoarders to some degree.

And you know what, it's okay. You're a hoarder. He's a hoarder. She's a hoarder. It is normal. Just because you keep some stuff, it doesn't mean you're going live on a property that looks like the one above or that you are going to be on a future episode of an exploitative television show.

There will be no judgments cast here, we are of the same ilk.

And yes, there a difference between a hoarder and a collector, but it may be difficult to see the differences at times, especially when you look at the psychology of collecting and hoarding; the line becomes very blurred, a true neutral gray region. And while I'm not a psychologist, I can share some basic definitions I use.

A collector is someone who collects things of a specific type or theme. Comic books, records, movies, plates, glassware, antiques, vintage cars; we all have our reason's or as I like to call it, passions for collecting these things. But typically a collector collects one, two or maybe three of these types of things.

A hoarder is someone who has a hard time letting go of things; with a deep neurological need to "save" them. Usually, but not always, these things a hoarder "saves" can have very little real world value (read garbage); but again not always, as the value of many things hoarders "save" could be shockingly high.

This means that a collector that "collects" more than one specific type of thing, could, technically speaking, be a clinical hoarder, especially if the "collecting" is impulsive.
 
Some record collectors are known as completion-ists. Completion-ists can be mild; must have all the songs from their senior year of high school, as an example. Or, Completion-ists can be extreme; must have every version of every record from a certain musician/band (including imports from various countries). Even though we, as record collectors, all have some form of completion-ist in us, the person who needs every version (imports, misprints, reissues, etc) of every album may be a step closer to being classified as a hoarder.

For me, I will give Van Halen as my personal example. I needed to have all of the Van Halen records in my collection, but that did not include the Van Hagar era starting with 5150 (I have taste, though you may think it is poor taste, we won't get into that argument here, as poor taste is still taste.)

So let's talk a little bit about records as a type of thing to collect versus hoard. You are a collector if you collect music you like and listen to. You might be a hoarder if your "collection" contains music that you don't like or music you have never and will never listened to.

For me in this instance, if my collection had one or more Van Hagar albums, it would be likely that my collection would contain albums I didn't like from other bands I otherwise liked, or even albums I didn't like from bands that I didn't like.

This alone could check off one the markers identifying me as a hoarder.

And this scenario can get really exaggerated. I know of people, ahem, a "friend", who takes car loads of records home with them regularly. I actually wrote a posting back in February, that talks a little bit about one man's obsession that led him to buy enough records over a 20+ year period to fill a single-car storage unit, front to back, top to bottom, with boxes and boxes and boxes of records. I don't know what his motivation was during that time, all I know is that I gained access to so much vinyl that I didn't know where to begin.

Record collectors, and collectors in general, tend to have mild versions of ICD. Not all collectors have ICD, Impulse Control Disorder, is very common in people with ADHD, but many collectors do suffer from it. ICD is characterized by a failure to resist a temptation, urge or impulse that may harm oneself or others.

Addicts of all types tend to have ICD; drugs, alcohol, sex, shoppers (shop-aholics), porn or Facebook. Addictions are two parts, a need to "feel good" or more than likely, the need to not "feel bad" and an inability to resist temptation when the opportunity to not feel bad presents itself.

When ICD becomes a problem for collectors is when we purchase or otherwise acquire records you don't have room for or don't have money to spend on... e.g. buying a new record or batch of records with your grocery money. If you are spending your grocery money on vinyl, you would be failing to resist a temptation, an urge or an impulse even if it may harm oneself or others.

And the funniest thing about ICD, it is often accompanied with feelings of guilt and remorse. So once you make the decision, you will feel guilty about it or regret that you did it. In the world of collectors, just as it is with addicts; remorse and guilt can lead to hiding purchases or having hiding places to conceal just how big your collection/problem is.

So, in my mind, my Van Halen collection was complete when I purchased Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, Diver Down and 1984. I didn't care if they were original pressing or reissues, I just needed them in my collection. When I saw one, and it was in my budget (meaning I could find a way to justify buying it when I saw it; and I always found that justification, even if I didn't have the spare cash to do so), I purchased it, usually making a small sacrifice in some other financial area of my life; some times this was accompanied with remorse, but rarely with guilt.

But once my Van Halen collection was complete, my record collection remained incomplete. So... I moved on to another; for me it was Led Zeppelin and then on to Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I realize that earlier I wrote that this posting was to be free from judgment, and it still is, I am not here to judge anyone for any mental health issues they may have, but I am using this image (right) of Henry Rollins to express my judgment of people who allow their collections to be damaged. I just don't understand that mentality.

If you collect something, you typically have a love of the thing you are collecting.

Regardless if it is comics, records, mugs, beanie babies, dashboard hula girls or bottle caps; if you aren't taking care of the collection, it shows a disconnect, a lack of love for the objects being collected; and that is not who a collector is at their core, typically.

This is a key sign of trouble as a collector; if you don't have room for the things you are bringing home and these things stack up, are disorganized and sometimes it gets to the point that things are getting damaged as a result. If your collection is causing problems with your marriage, relationship and/or finances, you may need to take some to evaluate some your priorities.

My ex-wife, along with so many other undesirable traits, was a hoarder/shop-aholic and remains one to this day. As an example of her hoarding, we would park $35,000 worth of cars in the driveway because she had so many things in the garage, floor to ceiling, things that were never-ever-ever used, we could barely walk around the garage, let alone park one or both of our cars in there. So she would literally put $35,000 worth of automobiles at risk of break in or outright theft to store things that were not used, ever and probably weren't worth five hundred dollars.

Whenever I attempted to talk to her about getting rid of much of the stuff, she would recite the emotional value of the items; "This was my grandpa's homemade shelf," or "We can't get rid of that, it was given to me by 'so-in-so'" or "priceless family heirloom. We would have "garage" sales once a year, that actually took place in our drive way, because our garage was still so full of junk.

Each sale would be full of brand new kids clothes, most of which still had the department store price tags on them. We would sell the clothes for twenty-five cents each, or five for a dollar. And each year we made nearly $1000 at our garage sales. That should give you a sense of the true scale of the issue.

Then after the divorce her hoarding got worse. She now has two single car garage sized storage units, across town from one another, in addition to her single car garage, all of which is filled to the brim.

And again, I am not throwing stones here. I have my things I hoard. I have two boxes filled with cables; chargers for old phones, power cords for computers, audio cables, coaxial cables, CAT-5 cables, speaker wire... and so on. It is something I can't let go of, but then again, my cable boxes are accessed multiple times a month to complete various projects I am working on.

Now I am not saying that if each and every little thing isn't in its rightful place, you are hoarder. I too have periods of acquisition where I come into a large quantity of stuff that I have to make room for. Like the time I was gifted over a thousand albums, which I culled down to three hundred albums.

Even after the culling, I was not prepared for an influx of three hundred albums into my collection. I didn't have storage, nor did have money to buy storage at that given moment. But again I didn't go out and buy three hundred albums. I couldn't say no to the opportunity.

But rather than store them in my garage for years on end, I culled the thousand albums down to three hundred must keeps and made a plan to expand my storage to accommodate the fact that I just tripled my album collection. The other seven hundred records, well I gave them all away.

And within a month, my plan was executed and my albums were all safely stored away in their permanent place in my home.

I never want my collection(s) to take over my life. I simply to enjoy the simple pleasures I find in this little insignificant life I have been blessed with. When will my collecting be done, probably the same time I retire from working; when I'm dead.

In conclusion, don't take anything I wrote here personal. This, as much of writing is, is more of an essay to myself; putting my own life in perspective. When you (read this as first person narrative as I am talking to you the reader at this time) read the word you, I am generally talking to myself in second person narrative. Nothing more.

Being a collector with a mental health condition like ICD or a tendency for hoarding can be a real challenge, especially from an outsiders perspective. While my wife asks from time to time, "So when is your record collection going to be complete?" My wife understands that my love of music runs deep and is very broad. But my wife is truly my reality check, for without my wife, I would likely have my garage filled with records, electronics, hulks and comics and would be very unhappy about all the clutter as I am minimalist regarding the world around me. But the minimalist in me can't suppress the fact that, deep down inside, I want it all, and I want it now.