As I discussed in my recent posts, if you’re an avid collector like I am, you know the process of hunting and gathering easily takes up our free time. If you’re a dedicated collector, too, you also know acquiring additional pieces readily uses up our spending money.

However, those expenses are often all right. Most Americans have spare time to relax or even waste, especially on weekends. We look forward to our downtime and often make time for the leisure-time activities we enjoy. Most people also have discretionary money to play with; we have the means to pursue our hobbies, and we’re willing to spend money on our interests. In fact, most people think spending time or money on themselves is entirely acceptable, so these costs of collecting are often considered completely reasonable.

The third cost of collecting, however, can be substantially more problematic because that consequence is always present—for our collections must exist somewhere, so they take up our valuable space.

For us avid collectors, the point of checking eBay or going to a flea market, of course, is to acquire additional pieces for our collections, so after a Saturday afternoon of junking, we usually have lots to show for our efforts, so we’re faced with more items to bring home, squeeze in, and maneuver around.

At first, of course, our new finds are our treasures. They are trophies for our efforts, our dedication, and our great shopping skills. We looked, we found, and we admired, so we bought. Soon after getting home, however, longtime collectors often find that their new purchases can quickly become white elephants, which is an old-fashioned term to describe things that may be of some value but aren’t necessarily fully appreciated.

Our beloved collections can become white elephants, or even elephants in the room, simply because they take up so much space. Our collections can fill up wall space and floor space, living space and storage space, space at home and space elsewhere. Moreover, if large collections need large amounts of space, extensive collections need even more, so they can actually take up our whole homes.

Extra space is usually quite tight in our own apartments, condos, and houses. Once we fill a space, we can’t fill it with something else. We can’t eat our cake and have it, too, but we want too, so we collectors come up with creative ways to display and store our collections.

First, we fill our walls with paintings and pictures, shelves and racks. We then line our rooms with bookcases, display cases, and curio cabinets. Next, our collections creep from room to room: We first display our treasures in the family room, perhaps, then the formal living room, and eventually even in the guest bathroom. We turn narrow hallways, spare bedrooms, and bonus spaces into our private galleries.

We defy the principles of good interior design and cram rooms with oversized cabinetry, crowded displays, and clashing colors. We resort to displaying toys in the parlor and sports memorabilia in the dining room. Master bedrooms reflect only the style of the lady of the house, and man-cave gear sneaks into the laundry room.

Once we’ve filled all open living space with our collections, we take over the dark recesses of our homes, too. We start storing our overflow, our extras, and even our new purchases. We pack up our treasures and fill our attics, our basements, and our garages. We say, “Don’t open that closet, Molly.” We put up “temporary” tarp-covered carports, and we have permanent sheds built.

If that’s not enough space, and we committed collectors need even more, we’re then willing to pay for mini-storage. We rent small units, large units, climate-controlled units, and even second and third units—and we pay. Month after month, we pay for space off site and the “privilege” of storing our so-called prized possessions.

Even if we’re filling only the space in our homes, this third cost of collecting might be the dearest of all because it is an ongoing expense.

Extensive collections demand a considerable number of square feet in our homes. They fill valuable real estate, and prevent us from living appropriately in our spaces. The more we collect, the more space we have to give over to our collections—or the more our collections take over our space, and, if we’re not careful, our collections can overrun our lives.

No matter how much we love something, if we don’t really have room for it, it becomes a problem. Our collections can clutter up our homes. They can limit our activities, push out our loved ones, and exclude our friends.

While we might want new acquisitions for our collections, we might not be able to adequately or reasonably solve the ongoing problem of too much stuff and too little space—unless we find a better way.

Rather than cramming more into your homes, why not consider curating your collection and displaying it at The Collectors of Western New York? It’s in the works as a new way for serious collectors to manage their extensive collections.

Has your collection grown to gargantuan sizes? Has your collection overrun your home? Please leave a comment and let us know how much space you’ve given to your prized possessions.

If we’re itemizing the costs of collecting, we have to address the cold, hard fact that collecting takes cold, hard cash. Collecting takes time and it uses up space, but it usually requires an outlay of money, too.

Unless you’re a beachcomber, scraper or Dumpster diver, or the recipient of gifts and castoffs from others, amassing a collection takes a goodly amount of money, especially if you’ve been collecting for decades.

Hopefully, like me, you’re able to stick to a reasonable budget and invest only your pin money on your purchases. I consider myself a bargain shopper, so I’ve been known to say that I can have more fun with $20 and a list of garage sales and thrift stores.

Some people afford collecting by having few other interests and expenses. They use all their weekly pocket money on adding to their collections. Others know how expensive collecting can get, so they save up for big shows and sales and then give in on those occasions alone.

Some collectors ask for money or gift cards instead of presents, so they can use them toward new purchases. Some allow themselves one or two splurges a year on special acquisitions, so they dip into their savings or whip out their credit cards then.

Others give into temptation and spend too much or go into debt to support their hobby, which, some say, can indeed become a real habit.

Then, of course, serious collectors also spend money on furniture or fixtures to showcase their collections. They buy display cases, curio cabinets, and bookcases to house their prized possessions. They buy peg racks for their coffee mugs or baseball caps, cases or stands for their costume jewelry, or sleeves or binders for their coins, stamps, or postcards.

Ironically, shopping for a curio cabinet was how I started collecting restaurantware, those heavy, durable dishes made by companies like Buffalo and Syracuse china.

After I graduated, I went to a furniture store to buy a curio cabinet for my childhood doll collection. Even with a real job, the cost was too high to display only a dozen bedraggled dolls, so I started scouting out second-hand stores.

In the very first thrift shop, I discovered that nice curio cabinets were hard to come across, but knickknacks, bric-a-brac, tchotchkes, and others sorts of junque were readily available. After only a few months, I didn’t have a suitable display case for my beloved dolls, but I had enough decorated restaurantware to fill a china closet, which I hadn’t found either.

In the past 25 years, I’ve paid good money for a few dozen pieces of furniture to display my different collections. I’ve spent money buying bookcases and cabinets to fit one apartment or another, then donated them when they wouldn’t fit our new digs.

Over the past several years, spending money on my collections (rather than on collecting itself) has gotten worse. I want our house to be a livable home, so I’ve been restraining myself and limiting my displays to only one (or two) per room, so that means most of my collections are packed up and stored away.

Over the years, just to box up—rather than display—my collections that now include china, glassware, and holiday decorations, I’ve spend hundreds on packing paper and bubble wrap, moving cartons and strapping tape.

What’s really bad is that I’ve had to move my collections offsite and spend thousands storing my so-called treasures elsewhere. The monthly fee has crept up to $235, which is obscene: Storing personal possessions temporarily makes sense for a number of reasons; storing them for years and years is extravagant, wasteful, and even idiotic. I know my money could be better spent.

If I didn’t have a storage unit, I know I could start over each holiday or season, buy all new decorations, and still spend less each month than I do on mini-storage. However, I’m not just a seasonal decorator; I’m a collector, so by definition I like to keep my purchases and add to them.

What’s really sad is that I’m often too busy or too tired to wade through the boxes and find the ones I want for the occasion, so I make do without. The very things that I’m spending money to keep for future use are, essentially, inaccessible (even after my hours of inventorying and labeling), so they go unused.

That’s insane. Why am I paying money to keep things I can’t access and enjoy?

Have you ever felt that way? Have you realized that you’ve successfully collected more than you can properly display or readily use? Are you beginning to feel guilty, as I am, about keeping the things you love so much?

There has to be a better way, and I think my plan for The Collectors Museum and Gallery is it.

If I can open a venue where people like you and me can put our collections on exhibit, we can eat our cake and have it too. We can get our prized possessions out of the attics and basements and into the light of day—or better yet, under the spotlight.

I want to continue collecting, but I’ve gotten to the point where I want to be able to appreciate the pieces I already own ever so slightly more than I want to acquire additional items.

I think my time and money will be better spent investing them in exhibits, so I can see my collections as I’ve always envisioned them and others can enjoy them as well.

Are you a longtime collector with an extensive collection? Where are your treasures? Are you ready to bring them out and put them on center stage?

Please leave a comment and let us know where your collections are and how you feel about that.

Now that I think about it, deciding on just the right name for my new blog wasn’t really that difficult. It took some thinking and some searching, which meant it was time-consuming. That’s all.

What’s truly difficult is collecting, regardless of how much fun it is. Collecting takes effort. It, too, takes time, it takes money, and it takes space, so there’s got to be a better way for us serious collectors.

If you’re a natural-born hunter and gatherer like I am, you know exactly what I’m talking about: Collecting takes up valuable time.

We collectors like to check the ads for shows and sales, and then we’re willing to drive all over creation hoping to find the latest addition to our troves. Some of us even plan vacations as thinly disguised buying trips to out-of-state shows and sales. Along the way, we’ve been stuck in traffic or lost on country roads and stood in endless checkout lines.

Thanks to the Internet, we’re willing to spend our evenings and other free time looking for treasures that previously were inaccessible to us. We might not have to spend time traveling long distances, but we lose hours surfing the web to bag another amazing find.

Afterward, if we’re diligent, we take the time to inventory our incoming purchases, and then spend more time figuring out where to put them—if we still have space. We might have to reshuffle the items in our collections to squeeze in new ones, or we might even need to rearrange furniture to fit in another curio cabinet or display case.

Paradoxically—if we’ve run out of space—we spend hours carefully packing up our new purchases and storing them away, which actually takes even more time than acquiring the pieces in the first place.

Over time, we spend countless hours shopping for furniture, fixtures, and supplies to house or store our collections. Have you seen how many different kinds of display cabinets are on the Internet? Have you spent time going from one big box store to another looking for just the right storage tubs? I have.

Have you stored your collections one way, but then found that didn’t quite work, so you had to invest more time to start over, hunt down different shelving or containers, and redo the storage system you already created? I have, and I shudder to think of the time I’ve wasted in repacking my treasurers.

If you’re like I am and have large collections but little free space at home, you have only two options: storage or stoppage.

Continuing to collect when we’ve run out of space in our homes is, as my father would have said, putting good money after bad. If we’re honest, we admit that we wasted time and money on collections that we’re now forced to store. We found and bought things we’re not really using. If we continue to collect even after our houses are bursting at the seams, we’re now wasting good money on the items themselves and on packing materials and even mini-storage rentals.

The obvious solution is to stop collecting. We could stop wasting precious time searching the web, driving on the road, or wandering the shows and shops looking for new pieces. We could stop wasting time cataloging new purchases, squeezing them in, or storing them away.

However, if you’re a committed collector like I am, you’ll agree that giving up the fun of collecting would make you miserable, but you might also agree that collecting and merely storing our collections is problematic, irrational, and even selfish.

So there’s got to be a better way, and I think I have it. The better alternative is to properly curate our existing collections according to appropriate themes and arrange them in attractive exhibits—so all our efforts can be displayed for others to appreciate.

That’s why I want to open The Collectors of Western New York Museum and Gallery with the goal of creating a public venue where private collections like yours and mine can be displayed.

We collectors spend a lot of time and energy amassing our collections, for collecting is truly and literally a labor of love. There’s got to be a better way than giving up our hobby or storing away our collectibles.

Why don’t we make one additional effort to go the distance and showcase our talents and prized possessions with others? Of course, it will take some time to round up the pieces in our collections, transport them to the new site, and curate them the way we’ve always envisioned.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? We buy these things because we have a vision for them. We see how the individual pieces fit within our whole collections. We have a vision for how they should be displayed—if we had enough time—if we had enough space—if we had an appreciative audience.

Now we can have all that once The Collectors of Western New York opens. We committed collectors can make the additional effort that will put our amazing collections on exhibit.

I think that would be worth the extra time and effort. Don’t you agree? Wouldn’t you love to see your collections displayed as you always imagined?

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts about your collections.