Toys in the Attic

Artwork by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

I was trying to find a certain book the other day. It wasn’t in any of the bookcases downstairs, so I headed up into the attic and walked into what can only be termed a natural disaster. Boxes upon boxes littered all three of the rooms. Everything from mementos of our daughter’s grade school career (including worksheets from the first grade), toys, college notebooks, (what good are notebooks?), books (literally hundreds of them), clothes, bedding, shoes (Imelda Marcos would be green with envy), and old records littered the entire floor. 

Of course, I knew all this stuff was up there. I’d put it there. I’d walked past it—or around it—a thousand times. But somehow, this time, the sheer volume of all this junk struck me. And it wasn’t just the attic. Our basement and garage are just as bad. Granted, we’ve been living in the same place for thirty years, but still, I had to wonder why we seem congenitally unable to throw anything away. 

Part of it is sentimentality. We kept a lot of our daughter’s stuff from her childhood, partly, I think, to preserve the memory of those halcyon days of parenthood. We all keep mementoes from our past as reminders of who we once were and how much better things were in the good old days. Memory, however, does tend to wear rose-colored glasses. We might recall the great times from high school as we simultaneously block out memories of the bullying, the cliques, the awkwardness, and the pain. It’s easy to remember our children’s first birthday parties or soccer triumphs or homecoming dances and to block out the tears, the arguments, and the trials of puberty. So, we hang onto the photos and the toys and the programs, all pieces of the good memories. 

Part of it is related to hoarding. I don’t mean the desperate toilet paper or hand sanitizer kind of hoarding, but the “maybe I should hang onto this because you never know when you might need it” type of hoarding—accumulating might be a better word. I usually keep the screws and parts left over from assembling shelf units (and there’s always a couple left) and put them in a jar on my workbench even though I know I’ll never use them. The same is true for cardboard boxes, especially now in the age of same-day delivery. 

I don’t think I’m alone in this. Americans seem to be getting—and keeping—more and more stuff. The storage unit industry has been mushrooming. One out of then people rent off-site storage today. According to Forbes, the valuation of the storage unit industry was $87.65 billion in 2019; it is expected to reach $115.62 billion by 2025. (Forbes, Dec. 1, 2020, “A Look at Self-Storage Growth Trends Now And Post-Pandemic”. Scott Mayers.)

Americans are materialistic; it’s a keystone of capitalism, our philosophy (and our religion), but it’s getting a little bit excessive. According to the website “Becoming Minimalist” (Becoming Minimalist) the average American woman owns thirty outfits. In 1930, that number was nine. Shopping malls outnumber high schools; 93% of teenage girls name shopping as their favorite pastime. An average 10-year-old child owns 238 toys but only plays with 12 daily. Most American homes have more TV sets than people. According to Psychology Today, Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches than they do on higher education. Finally, The Daily Mail reports that over the course of our lifetimes, we will spend 3,680 hours searching for lost items somewhere in the clutter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans spend $1.3 trillion annually on nonessential goods—stuff we don’t really need. This includes pleasure boats, liquor, motorcycles, jewelry, video games, and other toys. Why? And for what? Many of us choose to buy this non-essential junk rather than to save for the future and amass huge credit card debt in order to score our next consumer fix. Are we victims of a capitalist machine that has brainwashed us into thinking that acquisition equals happiness, that accumulating material goods equals personal worth? Are we only happy at the mall—or online? 

We might keep stuff to remember, as memorabilia of our past, but we keep getting stuff—more and more of it—because the act of acquisition has meaning. We can show off our new boat, buy that outfit that makes us feel better, or get those new shoes that everyone else has. But after those feelings wear off, our new buy is just another item in the back of the closet. 

Of course, another part of the American consumer culture focuses on smart spending. Coupons, sales, and specials—including the holocaust known as Black Friday—are means by which the consumer demonstrates his cunning and skill navigating the marketplace. During those dark days of quarantine last winter, we witnessed the hoarding of household necessities: hand sanitizer, bleach, and—oddly, toilet paper. These items seemed to be the most valuable to the average American, those they were least willing to do without and they snatched them up with the same predatory ruthlessness seen on Black Friday. You see the same sort of instinctive grasping during blizzard warnings. People will go out and buy milk, bread, and other perishables as if they might be snowed in for weeks rather than—in the worst-case scenario—two days. 

I’m as bad as anyone else. I collect vinyl records, vintage Scholastic books, and Avalon Hill strategy games; I have five guitars and three amplifiers and three keyboards. I have boxes of clothes that should go to Goodwill. My wife has enough china and glassware to open a restaurant. But I have been consciously downsizing—a box here, a bag here, and a trip to the recycling center every week. I’ve been cutting down on buying extraneous stuff, asking myself if I will ever really use that Popeil Pocket Fisherman. 

Thoreau championed a simple life as a means to self-reliance and self-knowledge. He considered materialism as a hindrance to personal growth, a diversion that disallowed reflection and self-realization. Perhaps this is why we surround ourselves with so much junk. Perhaps we can’t bear to look in the mirror and see who we really are; perhaps the act of self-discovery is too difficult and too boring. Who wouldn’t rather be playing Fortnite or watching TV rather than cleaning out the toys in their attics?