Just a random question that came to me the other day after I saw a preview for A&E’s Hoarders. Scrapbooking is huge, or at least it was a few years ago when it seemed to go from hobby to craft store ubiquity over night. Part of me thinks it’s a great way to organize keepsakes like ticket stubs and photos that would otherwise stay in drawers and cupboards.
But then I wonder if the industry is just catering to a hoarding mentality, encouraging people to collect stuff ‘for their scrapbook’ instead of throwing it away or being happy with the memory.
Anecdotal, but every single scrapbooker I have ever known has a serious clutter or hoarding problem, along with a gazillion pounds of scrapbooking and other craft supplies.
I’m on the fence because I think it can be both. Ideally, it would be great if that means all your momentos go into one handy dandy place, but like Lurker says, it might just mean they end up with tons of accessories to feed their addiction.
As an occasional scrapbooker, I don’t have the clutter/hoarding problem, but I do have those gazillion pounds of scrapbooking/craft supplies.
It’s a collection, in a way. I love the colors, patterns, and textures of the papers. There was a time when I had money and had to have every “next best thing”. I finally had to have a self-imposed moratorium on buying anything new and have continued to dwindle my stash over the last few years.
The passion for chronicling our lives is not a new one. Some see scrapbooking as cheesy, others take it to the extreme, but I certainly hope that not every scrapbooker I’ve ever met has been a hoarder. That thought scares me.
Counter anecdote, I have a friend who scrapbooks who isn’t cluttery (is that a word?) at all. If anything she’s compulsive the other way about keeping things clean and tidy.
ETA: Although I know she scrapbooks and have seen the books, I’ve never seen her scrapbooking gear out when I’m over there. I’m not even sure where she keeps it.
I don’t think the hobby would turn someone not predisposed into a hoarder. It does seem to me that scrapbooking particularly appeals to people with hoarding tendencies. Afterall, it’s about keeping things. And the doodads are fun to buy and are (individually) inexpensive so even someone as broke as I have been can get the aquisition rush.
I am right now coming to grips with the fact that even if I retired tomorrow and started making pages full time I will never use all the crap I’ve bought to make scrapbooks. And really all I want is to store my photos safely and for future generations of my family to know who’s in them. They don’t need to have fringe.
Anyone with a dedicated craft room need 100lbs of scrapbooking frippery?
I have wondered lately about the craft industry and the trends towards more and more expensive items. My grandmother and mother knit absolutely beautiful things out of Red Heart cheap yarn. Now there seems to be a degree of fiber snobbery. The big item in all the craft stores for scrapbooks seems to be a personal die cutting setup, there are also personal screen printing machines. Really? A $300 machine to print your own t-shirts?
Most of the scrapbookers I know are Occupational Therapists, aggressively tidy and compulsively orderly. It may be random chance, but appears to correlate to above-average cooking skills.
I thought about scrapbooking, then realized that it would just encourage me to create physical prints of digital pictures. In short, it would create more crap in the world.
There are digital scrapbooking programs which make a lot more sense to me. But then, all I would put in a scrapbook are photographs, and if I ever wanted to put in a ticket stub or receipt I’d scan it without a second thought. Wanting to keep a dried rose or a charm bracelet or whatever in a physical scrapbook… that’s the first tiny step on the road to hoarding, I think.
Most of the scrapbookers I’ve met have a huge pile of stuff. Most of those women were also emotionally attached to that pile of stuff. It takes a lot of money and time to build the collections so it’s hard to see it as just paper and trinkets.
If you want to blow your mind, go to any scrapbooking website, find the gallery, look up “scrapbooking rooms.” I’ve seen pictures of rooms with more stuff than your average store. It’s not about just keeping the movie ticket stubs at that point.
It really depends. If you have tendencies, sure, you can be lured towards it. The ones that I see that don’t get cluttery are the ones that specifically use scrapbooking for one event; like the birth of their child, and not the day to day minutaie of their lives.
My MIL pseudo scrapbooks and she’s not hoardy at all.
However, I say pseudo because she buys pre-printed kits and assembles them with photos (typically of pets) and that’s about it. She made me one for my dog which I really like but it’s really more of a photo album with pretty pages than a scrap book. Although perhaps I don’t know what a scrap book is.
Anyhow - she seems to buy the kit, make the book and give it as a gift. She doesn’t have a huge room of crap in her house and the supplies she does have she keep neatly in a craft cupboard.
Neither, or both. If you don’t already tend to hoard stuff, scrapbooking isn’t going to make you into a hoarder. Yeah, you’ll accumulate a pile full of scrapbooking supplies, but you’re not going to suddenly start collecting broken vacuum cleaners, beer cans, kittens, or whatever. It’s not going to make you start storing old lumber in the bathtub, or stop washing the dirty dishes.
However, if you already hoard stuff, it’s probably going to become another area in which you hoard (“These supplies were on sale, so I bought them, even though I don’t need them.”). It’s also a convenient excuse to continue hoarding stuff (“Don’t toss that, I’m going to scrapbook it!”).
My mom has done some scrapbooking in her day, but she doesn’t hoard. She found it enjoyable, and has done some books to commemorate events (weddings, special vacations) or as collaborative projects with other crafters.
My Aunt has an entire room of their fourBR house devoted to the scrapbooking stuff. A whole wall of little plastic drawers, and several boxes in the garage.
She originally started scrapbooking in order to formally frame the mementoes she wanted to keep, so that she’s be more comfortable disposing of the less valuable mementoes. I think that’s a common progrssion, and probably the reason so many hoarders or borderline hoarders wind up adding scrapbook mess to their stacks.
That’s a shame because I was hoping that might just work – get people to save and scrapbook just one ticket stub and menu from their trip to New York instead of a dozen plus a MetroCard, playbill and piece of trash they found on the ground.
And I can’t believe no one was kididing about scrapbooking rooms. Sure the one in the photo is organized, but… what? I can’t decide if it’s better or worse than a wrapping paper room.
The Michael’s craft chain now sells scrapbooking furniture. Wooden shelves and wooden storage, to be filled with scrapbooking supplies. So obviously a lot of scrapbookers are hoarders.
As a hoarder myself, I can see how dangerous scrapbooking could be. If you package of paper, and only use two sheets, you can’t throw the rest away.
Also, every time I’ve seen scrapbooking on TV the instructor says, “Don’t throw away the scraps, we can use them for something else.” Now there’s a mostly full package of paper, and a folder with scraps in it.
The whole scrapbooking thing scares me. I’ve been looking into it because I want to make some photo albums, and the 12x12 format offers a lot of flexibility, especially since I have photos of more than one size. I also want to be able to write down who/what/when, etc. And I like the idea that I could put that proverbial ticket stub on the page too if I wanted.
So yeah. A photo album in a somewhat flexible format. Sounds good, right?
No! Every time I try to figure out what I want to use, all the regular simple stuff is irretrievably buried in an avalanche of froo-froo chazzerai! I just want a black album with cream-colored pages,and I want to write down the captions in a black pen. Is that so difficult?
Anyway, I voted neither or both, because depending on the approach, it can be a means to get rid of most of the extra crap or as others have said, it can give you an excuse to keep a ton of extra crap.
