Dear Lee,

I’m trying to clean files, one drawer at a time, as part of the decluttering project I started last year. But there are 169 file drawers (we just counted) filled with pictures, clippings, and copies of old projects, columns, book manuscripts, etc. I found a folder going back to the 1980s filled with articles about why people collect. The experts and other writers are NOT collectors, and they were discussing an activity they didn’t understand.

A 1980s book by a psychoanalyst surprised us with claims that all levels of collecting from “scholarly connoisseur” to “thief” are a search for comfort and reassurance. All people are the same at birth and it is lack of love from your mother that makes a collector. If we had better parents, we wouldn’t need to collect. Collectors have a “hunger for acquiring” because of past deprivation, loss, or vulnerability and so are moody and depressed. In other words, people with a loveless childhood spend the rest of their lives pursuing Toby jugs or matchbooks.

The author notes that ancient people collected human heads because they had magic powers, and body parts of saints to help attain heaven. Later, it was tulip bulbs, not as an investment as I had learned in history class, but for the need to collect scientific things to gain status. I had to laugh at some of the author’s historic examples of eccentric collections for their hobbies, but I am looking with 21st-century eyes. Bells, because the collector is soothed by church bell tones, and Churchilliana, including half of his smoked cigar. (She would be shocked at today’s collectible celebrity game-worn shirts, shoes, or chewing gum.) Another 1980s author said collecting starts in childhood, and it is a drive for completeness (get every Hummel figurine) and order (research and sort by date, color, shape etc., characteristics of the scientific method). Freud said collecting is an addiction, second only to nicotine.

By the 1990s, collecting was seen in a more favorable way. It meant you met interesting folks who enjoyed life and had a sense of humor. They joked that their collecting habits were “obsessed” or “crazy.” It can help a marriage if the couple collects and spends time together at shows and meetings. And in old age, collectors still have friends who share their interests even if they only meet once a year at the annual convention.

Collectors agree it adds pleasure and spice to life at all ages. We are often able to loan some of our treasures for exhibits, help raise money with a house tour, assist at an auction, or talk to a group about what we own and have learned about history, lifestyle, disappointment (a lost bid), and success (a rarity under the table at a garage sale). Collecting is now considered a sign of intellectual curiosity and status, but we know it is really mainly fun.