Keychains and Clutter: Coming to Terms with My Hoarding Tendencies

To trash out or not to trash is the question

One of writer Priya Kalyanasundaram’s many keychains from the collection she’s held onto since childhood

When I was a little kid, we lived in a rented studio house on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. The house was far away from all the fun things the city had to offer. I couldn’t wait to grow up, move into the city, and live the life I believed I deserved.

The house didn’t seem small until guests pointed it out to us, with questions like "How do the four of you manage to sleep in this space?" "Isn't this too small for your two girls?" "Do you want me to help find a house bigger than this, for just a thousand rupees more on the rent?"

My mother always had witty answers to these questions and smart solutions to any problem that came up because of space constraints.

One such problem was my tendency to obsess over certain “useless” things and hoard them compulsively. If it wasn't a bunch of keychains, it was the exquisite golden wrappers that came with Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolates. If it wasn't the wrappers, it was fishbowls. At one point, there were over twenty fish, in five separate glass bowls and jars. Ah, how my sister and I rejoiced when the fish gave birth to more fish!

My mother's solution was simple: A routine “inspection and trash out” of anything she didn’t approve of. This happened on Sundays when it was time for a deep cleaning of our house. She took my ever-so-diligent elder sister's assistance in completing the task, a sister who sometimes was my co-conspirator (as in the case with the fishbowls) and some other times was more than happy to dump my extremely cute but useless collection of Amul milkshake glass bottles in the trash.

I anticipated the time for inspection coming closer when the shelf assigned to me filled up or started to sag. I would stay home on those Sundays, hoping my mother would forget all about my hoarding habits. That never happened.

When it was time for inspection, my heart sank deep as I sat there helpless, crying, and sometimes throwing tantrums over how important the soda can lids were, or how I found the seashell inside the ocean waves when I randomly threw my hand into the sand while I was swimming. Or, the most delusional one, how I plan on using each keychain from my collection in the future—one for when I’d buy a motorcycle, one for when I’d buy my own bungalow house, one for my luxury car, and so on. The list was long.

Hoarding keychains seemed natural to me. They were more accessible as a kid with little to no allowance. More importantly, they made the possibilities of all my outlandish dreams seem nearer. They gave me a chance to be a part of my big future plans before I could even reach the future. I can’t fathom now how I truly believed I would get to do all those things in only a few years. I believed I could do it all if only these adults would let me do my own thing, but I never knew what that “thing” was. (Also, even if I did buy these fancy things, would I not want to buy new keychains?)

Back to my mother. She paid heed only to a sliver of my cries; for the rest she had no mercy. Trash had to be trashed out; a thousand chocolate wrappers were thrown away, and she wouldn’t spare them just for their golden shimmer. Seashells were spared if they weren’t broken. Boxes inside of boxes inside of boxes were tossed. The collection of dead butterflies was spared. Any other dead insect collection was thrown out.

I found ways to hide my things in the impossibly small space I had. Sometimes my sister helped me while other times, in classic sibling style, she ratted me out. I felt they were being too invasive of my space; they cared too little about the things that mattered to me. My adolescent brain felt the injustice of it all.

Now, many years later, we have come far from living in a studio house, and I have come far enough to understand their good intentions. My sister is happily married and I live by myself in a rented, compact one-bedroom house in the heart of the city, closer to work. We visit our parents in the outskirts, where they still live, but in a different house.

I don’t want to speak for everyone who hoards, but I attach dreams and plans to the little things that clutter up my space. Some are more realistic than others.

One of the keychains I rescued from my mother’s watchful eye has my name on it. It’s made of individual letter beads, stitched into a twisted line of two pink woollen threads. It dangles beautifully on my house keys now.

My dreams were different back then. I thought I would have achieved something noteworthy by the time I was twenty-five, that I wouldn’t have to worry about living in a too-small house. Funnily enough, when my mother visited my newly rented flat, she couldn’t help but genuinely ask, “Isn’t this house too small for you and your two cats?” I nodded. Then we both smiled at each other.

Like I said, my dreams were different back then. Grander. But life has its own way of lending itself to your dreams. Some keychains did fulfill their purpose, albeit in a different way. Some are still in my drawer, waiting to see the light of day. Or to go into the trash.

For better or worse, I have more space and freedom to hoard, just as I always dreamt of.

About two weeks ago, my sister came over to help me pack as I had to move apartments. So I was forced to take stock of my hoard in her presence. Turns out, I had more “useless” things than I needed in my cupboard, such as a collection of pine cones, seashells from various beaches of Southern India, seeds from different plant species, a book full of dead leaves, glass jars, a box of tiny boxes, clothes she had handed down to me five to six years ago (too small for either of us now), colorful plastic sunglasses, tiny animals from our school projects, and Christmas décor pieces from years ago. She helped me clear some of them by employing her old skills to work.

Coincidentally, in the same week, my colleague pointed at my desk and said, “I remember a few months ago there was only one box on your desk. Now it looks like you’re peeking out of a bunch of boxes, calendar, pouches, and all these.” She was referring to a pile of books I had stacked up above a box. I laughed.

Maybe it’s time for me to start doing my own round of “inspection and trash out.” Keep some dreams, share some of them, and trash out all the fluff.

Priya Kalyanasundaram is a writer and an artist. She lives in Bengaluru with her two cats. She spends most of her time brewing coffee or tea and curling up with a book. You can find her on Instagram.