Maximalisma
May 22, 2025 at 04:30PMLisa Russ Spaar contemplates the accumulation of stuff, both trash and treasure, over time. Before her paternal grandmother died, she purged and emptied her farmhouse. “She didn’t want her children burdened with decisions about what to keep and give away after she died,” writes Spaar. Now in her late 60s, Spaar considers her own relationship to things—how objects she’s owned at different phases of her life have defined her, and how her aesthetic and tendency to collect also reflect the poetry and music she’s drawn to. “One student at an end-of-year class party at my house remarked, in what I chose to take as a compliment, that being in my house was like being inside one of my poems,” she writes. Spaar’s piece resonates with me this week as I continue to pack up my home before a big move.
I have to admit, at 68, that all of these “things” comfort and inspire me no less than my college dorm room décor helped me, 50 years ago, feel like the person I wanted to be. At the same time, however—perhaps because I’m closer to Erikson’s stage eight now—I do worry about those who will have to make their way through all of this meaningful-to-me matter if I don’t do it first. It’s not so much that I don’t want my grown children (or worse, my grandchildren) to come upon that small batch of youthful Polaroids (where are they?). Or to plumb the histrionic depths of my teenage journals. Or to dig out, with disbelief, that long-unused bit of lingerie from the bottom of a drawer. It’s that I feel a responsibility, after a lifetime of gathering, to cull those personal treasures.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/05/22/stuff-hoarding-maximalism/
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