[AT] Melting it all down.(copper is the new gold), now: Age-related hoarding

[Ralph Goff]

Larry, thanks for finally putting a name to my disorder or affliction. I've 
certainly got it bad and have had for years now. Trouble is I am conflicted 
having the genes of my grandmother on one side who never saved anything and 
burned who knows how many unreplaceable family heirlooms in the old kitchen 
stove during her 'cleanups'. On the other side of the family I have the 
other extreme where hardly anything was thrown away. Most of the stuff they 
saved has now fallen into my "collection". Its fortunate that I live on a 
farm with almost unlimited storage space.
I've seriously looked at selling some of it on ebay but when it comes right 
down to it, I enjoy the "stuff" more than I would the cash. So I don't buy 
as much as I used to but I don't throw much away either.

Ralph in Sask.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry Goss" <rlgoss at insightbb.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2008 9:26 AM
Subject: Re: [AT] Melting it all down.(copper is the new gold), now: 
Age-related hoarding


> You just reminded me of a "problem" I'm having to deal with, with my older 
> brother.  He's currently recovering from heart surgury and he sent me out 
> to the home place to do some stuff when I visited with him last week.  In 
> the basement, I found a cache of empty Quaker Oats cereal boxes.  101 of 
> them!  I asked him what sort of project he had planned for them, and he 
> said, "Nothing."  He's just keeping them to see if the years and years of 
> eating Quaker Oats had any effect on his heart.  I asked him why he didn't 
> keep a tally on a sheet of paper.  He said it was easier to count the 
> boxes!
>
> I got to thinking that in some ways all of us are doing similar things 
> with the collections of tractor-related stuff that we all have.  There 
> actually is a name for it -- Age-Related Hoarding.  If you Google that, 
> then once you get by all the articles about birds, squirrels, and dogs, 
> you will come to the stuff about people.  It's a particular version of 
> Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder, and apparently a lot of us suffer from it.