The Value of Things

… surrounded by things that don’t mean much to anyone except to the one who can’t take any of them along.

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

The best, and worst, parts of packing and cleaning is finding things we thought were gone. Both Shawshank and I are the type of people who like to acquire things, but not necessarily derive enjoyment from our collections after the fact. We’re like dragons, we want ALL THE THINGS. In some regards, we get more pleasure out of the act of collecting than the collection itself.

We both have large collections, and a couple of shared collecting interests. He has a large collection of Lego sets and Funko Pop figures. Unlike some collectors, he’s not the type to need a complete set of something. With both of his collections, he’d only buy the things he really liked. He didn’t need to make sure he had every minifig in each blind bag series that Lego released, he was happy to get a couple of bags with some spare cash at the end of the month. The same goes for the larger Lego sets, or the Funko Pops. While he had a couple of full sets of Pop figures, he usually only bought things that caught his eye. He didn’t need to find every variation of a character ever released.

In my case, I have my collection of first generation My Little Pony. I’d estimate I have around 300 ponies. Out of them, I have only two complete sets. For me, it was always the collecting versus the collection. I enjoyed finding a deal, or an unusual variant of something, or restoring them to their original state. You can see this in how mine are displayed. Ponies with more value to me are in the glass display case, the rest are in a cheap bookcase in the Pink Room.

I can’t speak for what he might feel every time I tell him about selling another part of his collection. Speaking for myself, however, I’m dreading selling mine. For the most part, I don’t have a lot of attachment to many of the ponies in my collection. On the other hand, there’s many in there I actively hunted down, and I will be sad to give up. I’ve built small “armies”, collections of variations of a single particular pony. I’ve got a bunch of international versions, which could be very different than their US releases. There’s a lot of love in that collection, but there’s also a lot of buyer’s remorse in there.

In both of our collections, there’s a sadness that we can’t keep them. Despite that sadness over the loss, I actually feel worse that we don’t appreciate the collections.

We collect, and we display.

We forget.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of things that are still in a sort of “packing purgatory”. I can divide those into two categories: things that have sentimental value to us, and things that were intended to have sentimental value.

In the first category, we have items like my tiny top hat and the bouquet of duct tape roses I carried when we renewed our wedding vows in Vegas. I’d love to keep them both. There’s a picture my grandfather made for me when I was really small; a large coloring book sort of puzzle, which he assembled, glued to a board, and then colored. It hasn’t been displayed in the time we’ve lived here. I’m not even 100% certain it was hanging up when we lived with my mom. I’ve kept it, only because it hurts to think of getting rid of something he put so much care into. That guilt is why we never got rid of a lot of the things we have.

The second category consists of things given to us with the expectation we would put a sentimental value on them. Most of these items are valuable only to the gift giver, not so much the receiver. The boxes I pulled out of the closet fell into this category. Almost everything was from our mothers: things that had emotional value to them.

Their guilt made them hold on to these things.

Shawshank‘s mom is a quilter, and we have a lot of her creations here. I can’t take them all with me. When Shawshank was collecting rubber ducks, she made a duck-themed quilt. She made not one but TWO quilts with chickens all over them; hens and roosters getting married and raising little chicks. I don’t have any feelings for any of them.

Photo albums, yearbooks, childhood toys or clothing. Both our mothers gave us our baby books and collections of report cards. A lot of times, these items aren’t anything we could ever appreciate the way they could. I’m sure they know that. Unfortunately, they couldn’t fathom letting go of the work that went into their creation. So, instead of throwing them out, our moms simply gave these things to us. This way, we make the emotional choice: do we keep these items, maybe give them back, or do we become the bad guys and throw them out?

I guess I’m the bad guy.

I get to be the one to go through the boxes, and see all the items we thought we’d lost. Whenever I mention what’s been found, he’s quick to tell me how much he wishes he could help. Honestly, I think it’s better this way. If we were doing this together, we’d pull things out of the boxes and reminisce over the things we’d find. Being apart offers the chance to do things without worrying so much about the other’s feelings. Alone, I can open a box and marvel over how tiny the reindeer skin moccasins he wore as a child were, but I don’t feel connected to them. On the flip side of that coin, I don’t think he’d put any sentimental value on them. However, I understand why he would feel some guilt in getting rid of them. I felt bad throwing out his photo albums last week, just like he would feel terrible if he were the one throwing out my cookbooks and my book collection. It’s easier to separate the emotion from the item when it’s just one of us.

Especially in this case, when I can’t keep any of it.