Collecting for a Living

This week I was here in Chicago and was on WGN on Tuesday. I am really enjoying exploring the city! Yesterday I was at the Museum of Science and Industry, where this massive structure houses objects as large as a captured German U-boat submarine. This museum has a "hidden" collection behind the scenes of over 60,000 artifacts, and they had displayed a few of them in a small exhibit. One of the signs in this exhibit said "Collecting for a Living" and described some of the jobs of curators, archivists, and others who care for this collection. (photo from MSI's website)

In our jobs as Professional Organizers, we see many people who collect things as a hobby, but the collections are often ignored, stored away, forgotten, and neglected. They also may be taking over the house. It occurred to me that the differences here are worth noting. Museum collections are:

• Indexed, organized, and stored in adequate storage space.
• Archived properly to preserve the items.
• Valuable, either in historical or dollar value.
• Important enough to display and maintain.

If you are a collector in your personal life, is your collection getting the best of you? Are you getting the best of it? Do you care about it enough to index it and store it properly, or display it to enjoy? Would others appreciate your collection?

Comments

[Alex]

Hi, I finally clicked over here after reading your comment on my blog a couple weeks ago (I really appreciate your civil and understanding comment on this entry http://13yearsofclutter.blogspot.com/2008/06/professional-organizer-dilemma.html ).

I'm so impressed that you connected museum collections to the very relevant counterpart of collection-clutter! I hope that people with large collections take your advice instead of letting stuff consume their space or even forsaking it all in pursuit of a clutter-free home (!).