Triggers in the drawer: how much do we need to hang on to memorabilia?

Are you a hoarder or a collector or an OCD put-away freak?

April 06, 2019 04:04 pm | Updated April 07, 2019 03:16 pm IST

Recently, I found myself sucked into a certain kind of spring cleaning. It all started with a medium-sized drawer. Opening it, I realised that it was full of stuff I’d kept from lifetimes lived two, three, even four decades ago.

There were old tickets for film shows that had clearly been significant, either because of the film or because of who I’d seen it with. There was a handwritten draft for an application for funds for my education in America. There were blank restaurant order pads, complete with carbons, from when I’d worked as a waiter in New York in 1982. There were laminated delegate cards from various film festivals attended over the years. There were badges with rusting pins: Soviet battleships from 1972, from a peace march in New York in 1981, and so on. There were postcards from people I couldn’t place, sent from Morocco and Denver — ‘It was great getting drunk with you, buddy! So good to exchange our life stories!’, that sort of thing. There were cassette covers with handwritten song lists. There were diaries with daily entries, letters, and, for some reason, a dental pick of the kind dentists use to torture your cavities.

This drawer was a mini-godown of random memory-triggers and now its time as a receptacle for material nostalgia was up. I could definitely throw away some of the stuff, but not all of it. For example, there was obviously no question of chucking the duplicate key to the beloved family Ambassador we’d sold in 1997, not after that faithful vehicle had served us for 26 years. And, how could I bin the precious collection of labels that I’d cut out from different coffee packets across the decades? Opening other drawers I found more stuff that I had hoarded and forgotten. Suddenly I was slipping down a rabbit-hole, escorted by memory-related junk, throwing away that which was obviously rotten, that which evoked no clear memory, that which was embarassing, while trying to re-organise all the archival clutter I couldn’t — yet — bear to lose.

Regret or liberation?

Others I know also hang on to weird things. One friend used to collect stones from different trips they had made around the world. After 20 years, they suddenly threw away the whole lot, but not without huge regret. Another friend, divorced after long acrimony, left the country to live abroad. They left behind their collection of books and even awards that the ex-spouse was refusing to hand over. ‘You know, it hurts to lose the books, but at the end of the day, I don’t care, I can’t tell you how light and free I feel!’ Another couple downsized after their children moved out. In the process they sold off a lot of inherited furniture they had held precious — the freedom they gained was clearly more important than the sentiments residing in wood and glass.

There’s a notion that people hang on to stuff according to the space they have available, but this is quickly disproved. A friend points out that one day someone or the other is going to have to clear up after you’re gone and so it’s best to always run a tight ship. ‘Could it be that people who have children know there will be someone to sort things afterwards? That they will be there to ‘read’ your life through your objects? And that people without children therefore just keep less about them?’

Again, not necessarily. I’ve seen grand matriarchs leave behind meticulously organised houses and non-parents leave behind all kinds of sprawling mess. I think it has all got to do with your core nature. Are you a hoarder? A collector? Are you an OCD put-away freak or a sprawler? These categories are not mutually exclusive and can overlap in strange ways.

Proof of the past

In terms of things we keep, things that encapsulate particular moments of our past, it all depends on your relationship to memory, to how much you feel the need to live in the past, or how you use the past to fuel your present and future. I know people with vivid memories who have no need for the triggers or proof provided by objects. I also know people who have huge drop-outs in their memory but who won’t let go of a single dust-encrusted trinket. As for myself, all I know is that I have a newly deployed drawer for fresh hoarding and lots of magical elbowing and adjusting going on in other drawers as newly arrived things jostle with ones that have been occupying the space for years.

Ruchir Joshi is a writer, filmmaker and columnist.

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