Crafting with Kids

As long as people have been around, they have collected different items. Years ago, they would only purchased food and other necessities needed for survival. Now, people collect whatever items seem to give them pleasure or joy like sewing machines or train horns or what thigns they think will earn them some money later on like expensive works of art. Being a collector of something is a little hobby to some or an all encompassing career to others. There are all different types and levels of collectors. Sometimes collectors become obsessed with collecting and this becomes an illness of a hoarder.

There are several methods to be a collector and some people start when they are just small children. If you inquire with any man in his 40′s or 50′s if he collected baseball cards as a young boy, a big percentage will probably say yes. It is quite common for children to get involved in a phase or something that is trendy or popular at the moment and this turns into having a collection. Another example of kids collecting the latest phase or toys are the beanie babies or the Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh cards. These were the items for children to have at one point and a lot of children became collectors of them until the trend disappeared.

Because so many kids become interested in having a small collection of something at some point, this creates an activity for others to do as adults. For most of those kids, their collections fade away as they get older but for others, collecting becomes something they love to do. People usually collect things that they are passionate about, whether it is sports memorabilia of their hometown team or works of art by a certain artist.

What started out as a hobby for many people, can also become a lucrative career too. The people that are very into collecting things, do everything they can to become educated on that particular collectible. This can be a valuable resource for companies that handle collectibles by hiring a person that is so knowledgeable about a particular item. This can result on being hired by a large auction company like Sotheby’s or by starting their own business buying and selling certain collectibles or antiques, for example.

For some people, collecting and gathering items become a mental illness called hoarding. People that hoard have to constatnly collect things whether it is by shopping or even sorting through others trash. It may be clothes or it can even be food but the main problem of a hoarder is that they can not part with anything and have an emotional attachment to every item that comes into their home. Eventually the home is overflowing from floor to ceiling with stuff that they can not control. A mental health professional is the only person who can help a hoarder to reclaim a normal life again where they will not fill an emotional hole in their life with things.

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