Rod Serling's Metal Detector − 3 January, 2006
Clutter and collectibles. Unless you're a devotee of Martha Stewart (house arrest adventure set sold separately), the two go hand in hand. It just happens. One day you're own your own with little more than childhood possessions. Ten years later you're more than willing to pay rent for the unused items to have better living conditions that most people in third world countries.
The explosion of self-storage centers over the past decade has been noted in many business journals and entrepreneurial rags. Most folks use them to store items that will probably never see the light of day again. Others use them for business. Ebayers seem especially fond of these mini-warehouses; storing thousands of Jar Jar Binks figurines, in the hopes that his star has not yet set. I know one person who runs an auto repair shop out of one. It's the first group that has me the most puzzled. More so, since until recently, I was a member of the Storage Boomer generation.
When I purchased my first house way back in 1994, the only possessions I had could fit in a two bedroom apartment. Granted, even at this early date, the closets of said apartment were brimming with books, magazines, old computer equipment and boxes upon boxes of comic books. The spare bedroom doubled as an office and a junk room. The clutter virus had gained small, but insidious, foothold.
With the new digs came a wonderful opportunity to add more stuff --- a basement. In no time at all, the subterranean storage bin was rife with things that I had the good sense to leave at my parents' house the first time, plus the "rewards" afforded by my modestly increasing salary. With three bedrooms, there was now a need, no, a compulsion, to turn one of them into a temple of trash. It didn't help that I was the sentimental type who just couldn't part with anything that a friend or family member had given me.
Then there's the dilettante in me whose interest gets sparked in something long enough to acquire a fair amount of objects in its pursuit: a compound bow, attesting to a 6 month exploration of archery, climbing/spelunking equipment used probably 10 times max, a model rocketry set which successfully sent one missile to a leafy doom, et. al. Walking into the junk room was a little like watching Rod Serling on the old television series, "Night Gallery". I can just see him stepping over piles of neglected passions to arrive at one particular item. In his famous intonation he would offer, "Here we have a most interesting exhibit in the Junk Gallery. To the untrained eye, this might seem like nothing more than a metal detector, but to one man, it swung wide a doorway to frustration that should have never been opened..."
Over the years, I made occasional attempts at paring down the accumulation. Usually, these were touched off by a need for more space to store something MORE IMPORTANT. For a few days I would trash with righteous vigor; some of the items going to charity, but most going to where they belonged - the rubbish heap. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, its that things aren't nearly as valuable to you after you've moved them three or four times.
In 2002, my mother passed away in an automobile accident. Being the only child, I set upon the task of settling the estate while fighting back a tremendous sense of loss. I was very close to both of my parents, but especially my mother. Needless to say, she had saved report cards, school projects and many other bits of childhood detritus. When the smoke cleared I found myself with two houses and a whole new pile of STUFF.
My parents were collectors, though not to my chaotic standards. Mostly antiques, scrapbooks, photo albums and the like. My father, who had passed away several years before, was the likely source of my wandering interests. He collected guns at one point, military memorabilia sometime later, stamps and clocks pretty consistently. My mom, being a fastidious housekeeper, never let the collections turn into clutter. There was never a junk room (except for my bedroom) in their house. The biggest difference between my father and I was that he loved to "horse trade" (i.e., sell and barter) the items he collected. He could buy a clock at an auction one day and turn around and sell it for twice what he paid the next. He truly had the gift of gab in that respect. While I inherited the collector's gene from him, the desire to sell didn't quite make it into my genetic record.
Once my head cleared, I decided to sell my house and move back into my parents' home. While the old homeplace had more living area, it did not have the requisite basement. It was then that I fully joined the ranks of the Storage Boomers. For the low, low price of just $66 a month, I was able to put those boxes of 5.25" floppy disks from the 1980s in secure, semi-climate controlled surroundings. Never again would Lisa Hartman stare plaintively from the poster ripped from a dorm room wall, only to see a dreary basement. Now she had her own "apartment"!
It all seemed logical. I would get settled into my new home, then slowly start weeding through the contents of the $66 annex. Within a year, I would be able to cancel the rental agreement, having successfully eradicated the clutter virus.
Only, it didn't quite happen that way....
The more I thought about poring through that storage unit, the less attractive the prospect seemed. "It will take months to clean out." "Where I am going to put all of that stuff?" Each New Year, I would resurrect the resolution, "Clean out the storage building." By this time, I had turned my mom's old bedroom into, you guessed it, a junk room.
With a year-long spurt of business-related travel winding down in the fall of 2005, the idea of taking a stab at the clutter monster seemed almost relaxing. One day on the way home from the office, I stopped by the storage unit and grabbed four of the large plastic tubs that contained the things I once deemed valuable. I spent about three hours sifting through college term papers, magazines with tips on how to speed up DOS 3.3, and other assorted jewels. When I was done, I had retained less than half a tub. So buoyed with my success, I grabbed four more tubs on the following evening, and met with similar results. Over the course of a week I repeated the process, until there was nothing, but dust, in the storage unit. I finally ended up with six containers, which easily fit into a corner of the garage, and $66 extra in my pocket.
The interesting thing was, it didn't stop there. After three years, I found that my sentimental instincts were being overridden by my desire to clean house. I started with the junk room, then the attic, then the closets. What was the fuel which kept this fire alive? Obsession? No, I can be obsessed by some things, but making trips to Goodwill and the landfill doesn't do it for me. Without realizing it at first, I was walking in my father's footsteps. I had begun listing a few of the more valuable items on Ebay. While some things did sell as well as I had expected, other items surpassed my expectations. This is not a plug for online auctions. The lowly yard sale works just fine. Of course, I have to wonder whether or not my "junk" has found its way into someone else's storage shed.
The only thing I can be sure of at this point is that Mr.Serling's metal detector and the compound bow it was lying on top of just put me that much farther down theAppalachian Trail .
Dad, I might have finally learned your trade.
The explosion of self-storage centers over the past decade has been noted in many business journals and entrepreneurial rags. Most folks use them to store items that will probably never see the light of day again. Others use them for business. Ebayers seem especially fond of these mini-warehouses; storing thousands of Jar Jar Binks figurines, in the hopes that his star has not yet set. I know one person who runs an auto repair shop out of one. It's the first group that has me the most puzzled. More so, since until recently, I was a member of the Storage Boomer generation.
When I purchased my first house way back in 1994, the only possessions I had could fit in a two bedroom apartment. Granted, even at this early date, the closets of said apartment were brimming with books, magazines, old computer equipment and boxes upon boxes of comic books. The spare bedroom doubled as an office and a junk room. The clutter virus had gained small, but insidious, foothold.
With the new digs came a wonderful opportunity to add more stuff --- a basement. In no time at all, the subterranean storage bin was rife with things that I had the good sense to leave at my parents' house the first time, plus the "rewards" afforded by my modestly increasing salary. With three bedrooms, there was now a need, no, a compulsion, to turn one of them into a temple of trash. It didn't help that I was the sentimental type who just couldn't part with anything that a friend or family member had given me.
Then there's the dilettante in me whose interest gets sparked in something long enough to acquire a fair amount of objects in its pursuit: a compound bow, attesting to a 6 month exploration of archery, climbing/spelunking equipment used probably 10 times max, a model rocketry set which successfully sent one missile to a leafy doom, et. al. Walking into the junk room was a little like watching Rod Serling on the old television series, "Night Gallery". I can just see him stepping over piles of neglected passions to arrive at one particular item. In his famous intonation he would offer, "Here we have a most interesting exhibit in the Junk Gallery. To the untrained eye, this might seem like nothing more than a metal detector, but to one man, it swung wide a doorway to frustration that should have never been opened..."
Over the years, I made occasional attempts at paring down the accumulation. Usually, these were touched off by a need for more space to store something MORE IMPORTANT. For a few days I would trash with righteous vigor; some of the items going to charity, but most going to where they belonged - the rubbish heap. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, its that things aren't nearly as valuable to you after you've moved them three or four times.
In 2002, my mother passed away in an automobile accident. Being the only child, I set upon the task of settling the estate while fighting back a tremendous sense of loss. I was very close to both of my parents, but especially my mother. Needless to say, she had saved report cards, school projects and many other bits of childhood detritus. When the smoke cleared I found myself with two houses and a whole new pile of STUFF.
My parents were collectors, though not to my chaotic standards. Mostly antiques, scrapbooks, photo albums and the like. My father, who had passed away several years before, was the likely source of my wandering interests. He collected guns at one point, military memorabilia sometime later, stamps and clocks pretty consistently. My mom, being a fastidious housekeeper, never let the collections turn into clutter. There was never a junk room (except for my bedroom) in their house. The biggest difference between my father and I was that he loved to "horse trade" (i.e., sell and barter) the items he collected. He could buy a clock at an auction one day and turn around and sell it for twice what he paid the next. He truly had the gift of gab in that respect. While I inherited the collector's gene from him, the desire to sell didn't quite make it into my genetic record.
Once my head cleared, I decided to sell my house and move back into my parents' home. While the old homeplace had more living area, it did not have the requisite basement. It was then that I fully joined the ranks of the Storage Boomers. For the low, low price of just $66 a month, I was able to put those boxes of 5.25" floppy disks from the 1980s in secure, semi-climate controlled surroundings. Never again would Lisa Hartman stare plaintively from the poster ripped from a dorm room wall, only to see a dreary basement. Now she had her own "apartment"!
It all seemed logical. I would get settled into my new home, then slowly start weeding through the contents of the $66 annex. Within a year, I would be able to cancel the rental agreement, having successfully eradicated the clutter virus.
Only, it didn't quite happen that way....
The more I thought about poring through that storage unit, the less attractive the prospect seemed. "It will take months to clean out." "Where I am going to put all of that stuff?" Each New Year, I would resurrect the resolution, "Clean out the storage building." By this time, I had turned my mom's old bedroom into, you guessed it, a junk room.
With a year-long spurt of business-related travel winding down in the fall of 2005, the idea of taking a stab at the clutter monster seemed almost relaxing. One day on the way home from the office, I stopped by the storage unit and grabbed four of the large plastic tubs that contained the things I once deemed valuable. I spent about three hours sifting through college term papers, magazines with tips on how to speed up DOS 3.3, and other assorted jewels. When I was done, I had retained less than half a tub. So buoyed with my success, I grabbed four more tubs on the following evening, and met with similar results. Over the course of a week I repeated the process, until there was nothing, but dust, in the storage unit. I finally ended up with six containers, which easily fit into a corner of the garage, and $66 extra in my pocket.
The interesting thing was, it didn't stop there. After three years, I found that my sentimental instincts were being overridden by my desire to clean house. I started with the junk room, then the attic, then the closets. What was the fuel which kept this fire alive? Obsession? No, I can be obsessed by some things, but making trips to Goodwill and the landfill doesn't do it for me. Without realizing it at first, I was walking in my father's footsteps. I had begun listing a few of the more valuable items on Ebay. While some things did sell as well as I had expected, other items surpassed my expectations. This is not a plug for online auctions. The lowly yard sale works just fine. Of course, I have to wonder whether or not my "junk" has found its way into someone else's storage shed.
The only thing I can be sure of at this point is that Mr.Serling's metal detector and the compound bow it was lying on top of just put me that much farther down the
Dad, I might have finally learned your trade.
Comments:
Electronic Goose (August 9, 2007. 12:38am)
I really enjoy reading your stories.
kga245 (August 9, 2007. 11:34pm)
Me too. I just added this story to <a href="http://dandelife.com/great_stories">the great stories list</a>.