I just reread Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things and was struck by how the interviewee above, like many people, is attached to seemingly useless junk as a way of external memory storage. Her collection of movie theater soda cups is her memory of films shared and seen with her husband. The fear of forgetting or erasure is powerful, imbuing even the most insignificant scraps of paper with meaning. (Don’t ask me about my cardboard boxes full of college lecture notes!)
Hawaii friends say that hoarding tendencies are amplified here by memories of the 3-month-long shipping strike in the 1970s and general ambient Asian/local Japanese thriftiness (see Kam Swap Meet and the popularity of church rummage sales).
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