Collective insight

I discovered recently that there is an expiration date on the "Pick of the Week" iTunes cards that I had greedily snatched up  for free from the Starbucks coffee counter. Darn, I had collected over a dozen of them from my various visits and they were beginning to make my wallet bulge with importance. Some, I discovered, were dated way back to December of 2009. Hmmm. Perhaps it is time to clean out my purse.

In retrospect, I am not entirely certain of my motives for picking up those cards. Was it that I was intent on previewing cutting-edge music, or that I could so easily collect something that was not only free but the exact size of a credit card? Every once in a while, while retrieving something from my wallet, I would glance at these cards, thinking to myself, "Gee, I've got a lot of music here."  It was powerful to think that I could so tangibly have at my fingertips something that usually can only be experienced audibly.

This got me wondering if there are other things that I have an obsession about collecting besides the plentiful array  of dust featured all over the finer things in my home.  


I think Iʻd have to add books to the list. It isnʻt as though I have a compulsion to collect them, it is more that I canʻt seem to get rid of them. Books are now accumulating in double-parked fashion on the first row of my built-in bookcase.  You know the library in the movie My Fair Lady? It is an over-large room lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. The ceiling is two stories high and the room features an interior balcony halfway up so that you can stroll along in mid-air perusing the collection. That is my fantasy room.  AND an awesome place to enhance my ongoing dust fetish.


My common collections, though, seem to consist of:  Taco Bell napkins (why do they always give me five when I am obviously only ordering for one?), ketchup packets (I donʻt even ask for them), beer bottles (oh, wait, Iʻm planning on recycling those), and clothes that are too small for me (I plan on fitting them again one day).


What keeps me  from spiraling down the path of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is that I have experienced what it feels like to purge.  Ridding oneself of everything except only the most essential of items helps put your "needs" in perspective. In fact, on a daily basis, I have learned to ask myself, "Is this a want or a need"? Iʻm not saying that I am entirely in control of my "wants", but it does make me pause long enough to measure the anticipated pleasure-factor in possessing it.


So, for now, Iʻll keep up my fast food collections and keep feeding my hungry bookshelf, knowing that, in theory, I could purge them at any moment. 


Oh yes, and I forgot to mention my almost insignificant Pez dispenser collection. When my son had decided he was too old to collect them, I just could not bear to throw them away....


How many do you need of something to transform them from a "bunch of things" to a "collection"? I guess it depends on how many you feel you need.