Cleaning out the Closet

What is it about things? Why are we so attached to our stuff? Lots has been written, painted, sculpted about the melancholy of objects - that inner life of things that we can't penetrate or ever know - but nothing seems to express it fully. So maybe our relationship to the object world isn't so much about things themselves but about the emotions that we attach to them. Tamar Schor's Oodala: The Secret Life of Scattered Objects offers a home for your personal detritus and the feelings and memories embedded in it all. The site is easy to use: fill out a form describing your object, upload a jpg of it, tell its story, and you're up and running. Enter as many objects as you want and keep track of them in your own file. Then link them to other people's things from all over the world and make a huge interlocking story with your cyber neighbours. There are Lonely Items and a Top Ten - this place is really addictive. And best of all, you get to snoop through other people's stuff! - Peggy MacKinnon