Do You Really Need All That Stuff That's Cluttering Up Your House?

One of the biggest problems that Americans have had in the last few years is the amount of clutter in their homes. Every womans' magazine that you pick up has an article prominently advertised on the cover advising you on ... How To Tame Your Clutter! Folks who love to organize other people's lives have built thriving businesses de-cluttering their fellow Americans' houses.

And, if you have an even worse problem---namely, having lost your job---I will bet you are looking around at all that junk and wishing you had---safely back in your pocket---all the money you spent for all that junk.

You aren't alone. People all over America are realizing that our former way of life has gotten us way in over our financial heads. Nowadays, we may be using credit cards for necessary things like food, and gasoline to get to work, assuming we still have jobs to go to. But we have started to think regretfully of that credit card debt that was run up on the purchase of---mere junk.

Perhaps the Great Recesson was what we needed to open our eyes to the foolishness of our former spending habits. Want to get really sick? Just look around your house and add up the price you paid for each individual piece of all that junk. Then think of how nice it would be if all that money were sitting as a cosy little nest egg in your local credit union. (Notice...I didn't say "bank". The fees are much lower in a credit union.) And while you are adding up, don't forget to add in the interest and late fees, etc. that the credit card companies charged you through the years while you were running through the Malls, buying all that stuff.

Annie Leonard of Berkeley, California, has made a very entertaining short film that shows you the total cost of all that junky clutter. 

Did all this just happen? Or was something going on that we had no knowledge of? I mean, here we are, just living ours lives, going to work, raising our families and, basically, just trying to survive. Now, all of a sudden, we are in the middle of a Great Recession! WTH happened?!

Once upon a time, in the City of New York in the State of New York, lived two boys named Homer and Langley Collyer. They lived, at the time of their births, in a three-storied brownstone mansion on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 128th Street, which in that era was a very posh neighborhood, indeed. Their father was a gynecologist and their mother was reputed to have been an opera singer. Their parents, first cousins, were descended from an old New York family, the Livingstons.

The boys, Homer (born in 1881) and Langley (born in 1885) were very well educated. Both graduated from Columbia University. Homer became a lawyer,specializing in Admiralty Law, while Langley became an engineer. The boys seemed to have everything going for them. They should have had wonderful, productive lives, but there were already signs of, shall we say...strangeness...appearing in the family. Their father, a successful doctor, when he had occasion to visit the City Hospital on Blackwell's Island out in New York Harbor, chose to go by way of canoe. When he had finished his labors for the day, the good doctor rowed himself back to Manhattan Island and then, carrying his canoe over his head, he walked all the way back to his mansion up in Harlem. For an unknown reason, Dr. Collyer moved out of his home in 1909. Neither boy ever married, or were gainfully employed for very long. By 1929, their parents were both dead, leaving everything to their sons.

The Great Depression arrived and their neighborhood was changing. Their new neighbors heard rumors of the riches to be found within the mansion, whose owners never appeared outside of the house in the daytime. There were attempts at break-ins which prompted the brothers to board up all their windows and to barricade their doors with cartons filled with junk. As time passed, Homer became blind and paralyzed. Langley, who prowled the city at night bringing home anything that caught his fancy, took devoted care of his brother. They never paid any utility bills, causing their heat and electricity and water to be terminated. They used a small kerosene heater in the room in which they were living and Langley, after dark, would get water from a tap in a local park.

In the fullness of time, the powers-that-be at the Bowery Savings Bank grew tired of never receiving any payments on the mortgage they held against the Collyer Mansion. They began foreclosure proceedings. Langley met them on the steps of the mansion, gave them a check for $6700 (about $88,000 in 2008 money) and told them to get off his property. The check did not bounce.

When Homer went blind in 1933, Langley tried to bring back his eyesight with a diet of oranges. From his nightly foraging, he brought home bags of oranges which he fed to Homer. Langley also began to collect newspapers for his brother to read when his sight returned. He felt that Homer might want to catch up on the news.

With continuing attempts by his neighbors to gain access to all the reputed riches contained within the mansion, Langley used his engineering knowledge to erect booby traps with tons of newspapers and other junk in an effort to protect himself and his paralyzed brother. There were tunnels through the traps that had to be negotiated very carefully in order not to bring the whole mess down upon the intruder's head.

One night in 1947, Langley, while crawling through a tunnel to bring food to his brother, made a mistake. He had inadvertently sprung the trap, bringing tons of newspapers and junk down upon himself. One can only imagine the horror felt by Homer who, blind, paralyzed and helpless, heard the crash. And then silence...

On the morning of March 21, 1947, police received an anonymous phone call, reporting that there was a dead body inside the Collyer brothers' house.

It took over two hours for the police to gain entrance, Some say they finally forced a second story window, others that they were forced to resort to cutting a hole in the roof. They finally found the body of Homer who had starved to death. There was no sign of Langley. There were rats everywhere in the house. There were also eight cats. The stench was unbearable.

The story had the nation enthralled. There were reported sightings of Langley on the Jersey shore and in nine states. The newspapers were devoted to the mystery of the whereabouts of the missing brother. There was a huge manhunt.

The police began the gargantuan task of cleaning out the mansion, which had trash piled to the ceilings in all of its many rooms. Finally, the mystery of the whereabouts of Langley was solved. Langley was found a few feet away from where Homer had died. He was buried under a mountain of trash and was being gnawed on by a legion of rats.

Mary Duenwold wrote an article for the October 2004 issue of "Discover" magazine. She writes that hoarding "compulsion...scientists now theorize, is a natural and adaptive instinct gone amok. Elsewhere in the animal kingdom, the instinct to hoard offers clear evolutionary advantages." Such as squirrels and other animals storing food for the winter.

The Collyer Brothers' mansion was repossessed by the City of New York for unpaid taxes. When it was finally cleared of the tons and tons of junk and garbage, it was deemed to be unfit for human habitation and it was torn down. There is now a vest pocket park on the site named for the Collyer Brothers.

There wasn't too much of any value salvaged from the house before demolition. Those things that could be of use were sold at auction and only brought in about $2000. One of the things sold was the chair in which Homer had died. The chair was exhibited to the public. In 1956, the chair was bought by the first of a series of collectors. The Death Chair was quickly resold many times because misfortunes happened to each new owner. The chair began to be thought of as cursed.

The last owner of the Death Chair was a collector of oddities named Babette Bombshell of Orlando, Florida.