So I did some work for a guy recently. He's a property manager and kind of a pack rat. Hoarder is maybe too strong a work, but if A&E hadn't skewed our idea of what a hoarder is, I think calling him a hoarder would be fair. Being a property manager, he has a ton of places to store things, and on top of this is always buying more useless shit at auctions. To give you some perspective on his mentality; He wanted 4 sets of lawn care equipment fixed and ready to go. It was mid-September. Most mid-sized lawn-care services probably don't have 4 of everything, but he had to have. Who cares if they're just going to get fixed, sit for 6 months and break again?
Anyway, he needed a basement cleaned out and organized. The basement was to an old laundromat, so it was rather large. There's also quite a few apartments above it. So, it's big. There was all kinds of junk, but mainly the kind of stuff you'd expect from a low-rent property manager; fucked up doors, tons of assorted baseboard heater parts, furniture that should be scrap or in someone's workshop at best. But there was a small room in the back. It was probably about 12x12 and filled floor to ceiling with what looked like the remnants of 100 failed garage sales. Broken lamps and knick-knack, and old doll. Bags full of old clothes and even a few wigs. But towards the bottom were boxes, stacked neatly. When we finally waded through all the junk, we got them. Nokia 3310 cases. THOUSANDS AND THOUSAND of Nokia 3310 cases.
The guys I were working with didn't grasp just how ridiculous this was. Later we cleaned out a garage and found even more. At the end, we pretty much filled the bulk of that 12x12 room with just these phone cases. I asked him what he planned to do with them. He said he's be selling them to Africans and South Americans when they finally got cell service. I didn't bother to point out why this idea is dumb, because he's obviously delusional, but I'm still thinking about that room. Full of the most needless accessory ever. This one brick of matter in the universe that exists in some dank basement in the middle of nowhere; maintaining it's existence due to the unbelievable delusion of it's owner. It's a strange feeling.