The joy of stuff

I'm a little envious of people who don't feel an emotional attachment to inanimate objects, I wish I could be more like that. While I like fancy new gadgets, and covet so much more than I could ever dream of buying, there are some things that I just can't bare to part with no matter how old and tattered they become. My iPod is very much old school, but unless it decides to stop working I can't imagine wanting to replace it with a newer, sleeker model. It holds everything I could ever want to listen to, which is all I need it to do, and I feel a bit lost if I don't have it with me. I don't care that it's outdated and probably makes me very uncool, it's mine and I love it. I've driven the same car for almost 16 years, and I'm dreading the day that I have to replace it. I can admire other cars. I may even wonder what it would be like to drive something newer, with air conditioning and a CD player, but when I think about actually get rid of it I become quite emotional. I will even be a little offended on its behalf if people ask me when I'm getting a new car, as if it could be so easily discarded just because it's not shiny and new anymore.

Unfortunately my love of stuff means I'm also a bit of a hoarder. It's not something I do consciously, I just have a hard time throwing some things out. Not all things, mind you. In fact most things I will happily get rid of. But there are some things that I just keep much longer than I really need to. At least a couple of times a week I look at my neatly stacked piles of videos and think I really should do something about getting rid of them, especially considering I haven't had a working VCR for a couple of years now. Many I hadn't watched for years even when I did have a VCR, and the ones I did watch I've mostly replaced on DVD anyway, but I still find it hard to take the final step of throwing them out. I know they're not worth saving - they're certainly not in the same league as the vinyl records that I haven't listened to for 20 years but would never dream of parting with. And I don't expect that video will ever make a comeback, so there's no reason to keep them. But still they sit there, in their nice, neat piles, mocking me and my inability to part with them. I can't imagine just binning them, although I guess I could always put them out on big rubbish day in the hope that someone will find them interesting enough to take. I love big rubbish day. I love that people will trawl the streets looking for treasures amongst other people's cast offs. And I'm always a little chuffed when someone deems my rubbish worthy of taking, and kind of offended when they don't. I've never had the patience for that kind of thing myself, and I really don't need any more stuff than I've got anyway, but I like that others are willing to put in the effort to rescue something wonderful that would just become landfill otherwise. It makes me feel a bit better about throwing things out if I know there's the possibility that someone else will take them home, and maybe even appreciate them as much as I have.