I like to go to estate sales. Sometimes I find something cool like old instruments, tools, jewelry. Sometimes I find something I can sell on Ebay for a profit, or just something I need like a blender. They don't make them like they used to, and estate sales have the ones that were made when they used to make them like they used to.
But mostly they are filled with crap.
Most houses have loads and loads of statuettes, dolls, magazine collections, more dishware then they ever could have used at once, cheap plastic crap. Most people are much higher on that hoarder spectrum than you would guess.
What is interesting is that most of the time it's not for hobbies. Not instruments, games. Not things they use, but just things they have. There is of course a percentage of houses that make you admire the persons life. If they own a guitar, a violin, and a piano I automatically gain some respect. It's interesting judging a person only through their possessions.
It makes me wonder what possessions would make my life look like to other people.
I have a, some might consider ridiculous, collection of colognes, something around 30. A guitar, keyboard, harmonica, computer, laptop, kindle, another kindle, phone, a collection of fountain pens, inks, a bunch of minerals, hand guns, clothes, just enough though. Paintings, tools, Magic The Gathering Cards. It was easier than I thought it would be to list out basically everything I have. Excluding obvious stuff like beds, toothpaste, etc.
I also have a storage unit with paintings my uncle did, ashes from my family. Lots of random stuff that means something to me, but not much to my children. The reason I'm keeping a lot of the stuff is that it helps me feel connected to my childhood. These things will probably sit around seldomly used for the rest of my life until eventually my kids have the chore of going through it and having the awkward job of deciding to through a bunch of stuff away that was important to their dad. There are times in life where I have to go through it, and I do get joy being seeing stuff from decades ago that remind me of memories that don't come up often, like a report card from school or a toy I had when I was 6. This creates a dilemma.
In some civilizations and tribes, important possessions are buried with the person. This seems like a great way to solve the dilemma. You can take it with you. Of course I don't believe you really can, but burial is becoming an option less and less popular. In 2015 more people chose cremation than burial, which is what I always intended to do. It feels wrong to take up a slot of land for the rest of eternity. Instead of throwing it away, perhaps one could curate some possessions that would be cremated with them.
On the other hand, is there a benefit in living with only the things you need now, owning nothing of sentimental value. We can always just think about our life and connect with it that way without being burdened by material objects. There are many sayings such as do you own your possessions or do they own you. Am I paying a hundred bucks a month for a storage unit just to keep stuff I'll never look at again? But does throwing it away means there are things in my past that I will never think about again? Is that important? After I die I wont think about anything again anyway, so whats a few years earlier?
I was hoping by the time I finished writing this I would have come up with a clear course of action, and I guess I have. Not because I made some persuasive argument or had some epiphany, but because I know that after I post this, I'm not going to go through my storage unit and throw everything away. What I think I will do is, bring stuff out of my storage unite, an old toy and put it up on a desk shelf, so it can serve it's purpose of reminding me of earlier times instead of being stored away in a dark room without being seen 99% of the time.
PS:
The title isn't a grammatical error.