Thread by @raulpacheco

Since I KonMari’d my room yesterday I reflected on the role of emotions in hoarding behaviour and how it is an easy narrative to say that people are hoarders because of their emotional attachment. There’s some work in #DiscardStudies on upcycling and recycling but...

I think we need to have a deeper rethink of waste production and the role of emotions.

Yesterday, I dumped ALL my cassette tapes.

All of them.

The ones I had since grade school, all the way to when I met my first boyfriend (and the ones I recorded for him too!)

Governing discards also means understanding how we govern ourselves.

I am assiduous about organizing and cleaning, and I hate clutter (the mark of a true #DiscardsStudies scholar or simply a Type A Virgo Upholder?) ... and yet,

I had tapes. I kept my grades from undergrad.

I actually had kept the handwritten, signed copies of each one of my grade certificates: Plant Design. Absorption. Chemical Reaction Engineering. Heat Transfer.

I kept each certificate. Just to make sure it was real.

WRT mementos, discarding them feels extraordinarily real.

I have a PhD. I already had an undergrad. Why did I keep my grade certificates?

Because of the emotional attachment. Letting go of these becomes a dialogue between the rational self “this is useless” and the emotional self “this matters to me”.

Monday morning reflections.