My junk journaling journey and management of my hoarding habit (visual representation) :

A very big aspect of my hoarding nowadays is of scraps. Anything which i find which i simply just keep for the sake of keeping. Most of the wrapping or paper has absolutly no meaning. Some does but it’s mostly just rubbish which I’m very self aware of and can’t quite explain why but i do it. For a while, growing up, my mum would tell me off when I would hoarder these things and even if it brought me a bit of distress to keep them just loosly around my room I had to find a way which my mum wouldn’t worry about it and I could still keep it in a way that wouldn’t bring me any from of distress too.

I stumbled upon the art of ‘junk journaling’ from a youtuber called Johanna Clough, and since I already had a passion for writing in journals I started to assemeble journals of those scarps I’d always kept even if it was an excuse to keep them, but at the back of my head I knew that I still had them. (going back to the psychology of ownership and attachment theory) This time though, i found junk jornaling wasn’t only environmentally friendly but also useful in helping me wind down. The act itself was theraputic as it only entails essmbling scraps of junk into collages and sticking them down. Sometimes i would even sit down and doodle (which i don’t do enough of now). Not only that but i was always left with a satisfactory feeling of completing a page or two when i sat down and my mind felt more at piece because i was making compositions right out of my subconcious without much thinking, simply arranging what i thought was visually pleasing to me and over the years I kept this up until even now.

I find that looking through these journals often reminds me of the different moods i was in at the time i created them or what i was into or where i went or what i bought at that time too.

A few of my favourite pages:

My most recent journal throughout this project over the course of 5-6weeks: