Little girls and adult doll collectors everywhere have been charmed by the American Girl dolls. The dolls are based on a series of books about girls from different eras in American history. There’s an American Indian a girl, a Swedish immigrant pioneer girl, an African American girl in the Civil War era, a girl living through the depression years and more. In addition, the company has begun issuing dolls and books about these girls’ best friends. There is era-appropriate clothing for each of these dolls as well as details like Swedish painted furniture for the Kit, the pioneer doll and a 1930s telephone for Kit, the depression era doll. In addition, there’s a line of “Just Like You” dolls that can each be selected with different hair color, hairstyles, eyes and skin so that it resembles the girl it’s meant for. There is also a line of baby dolls for younger children. If that weren’t enough, the company sells children’s clothes so that girls and their dolls can wear matching outfits.

The company was started in 1986 by Pleasant T. Rowland and was sold in 1998 to toy powerhouse Mattel. American Girl started out with just three dolls, each accompanied by a series of six books about a nine year old girl. Although, they are on the pricey side as children’s dolls go, they have been wildly popular throughout the nineties and this decade. Not only does the company continue to put out new dolls and books to keep girls and collectors interested, but they’ve got a magazine and several made for tv movies as well.

The dolls can be purchased online http://www.americangirl.com/ or at the American Girl Places in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, several stories of girly heaven full of dolls, clothes, furniture, doll hairstylists, a restaurant with special seats for the dolls and a theater where families can watch an American Girl musical.

Last night on ABC’s Medical Mysteries there was a story on hoarders, folks who have so much junk in their homes they cannot live in them. While I’m not saying that all collectors are so afflicted, there were some really interesting points about the brains of these people that I thought were relevant to us.

Dr. David Tolin, the director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., has devoted his career to studying what goes on inside the mind of a hoarder and he believes that such hoarding, currently considered a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, really may be a unique disorder completely separate from OCD.

Included in Tolin’s work, and the TV show, were brain scans of hoarders taken during the process of decision making and even loss of their objects. While hooked up to a brain-scan machine hoarders are asked to look at pieces of their clutter, such as mail and coupons, and then decide whether to save them or throw them out. When they decided to toss things, they then had to watch it get shredded. (I can only imagine!)

At this point, two parts of a hoarder’s brain become active, each at odds with one another. The brain’s hippocampus “actively searches for memories about the object.” While most people don’t think about objects too much — they just let their orbitofrontal cortex make a decision — the hoarder thinks about the object, why they saved it, memories of getting the object, etc.

As a collector, I feel this way about most of my objects. I remember the funny little shop I bought it in, the sweater the lady who rung up the sale was wearing, where I first placed it when I came home, and nearly every place that object has been in my homes.

This ‘war’ between the two parts of the brain, rational decision making vs. memory, is comparable to punishment, according to Tolin. “When the person is trying to make a decision about what to throw away, it seems that the person who is hoarding, is processing this activity as if it is deeply punishing,” he said. “The person who hoards is going through a very, very effortful search of their memory to try to think of as many things as they can about this item before they make the decision. What this all amounts to then is a painful and effortful process of decision-making, that you and I might take for granted.”

Dr. Randy Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College in Massachussetts, says, “One of the things we know about hoarding is that the beliefs people have about their possessions are so powerful, that it’s very difficult for them to get out of this behavior.” Now isn’t that the truth. My beliefs about my possessions are powerful… Just try and take that item out of my hands at a flea market — I double-dog-dare-you!

Gee, if I understand this — relate to it even — does that mean I have it? …But wait, just like with Ginsu Knives there’s more!

The hippocampus not only plays a part in memory, but in spatial navigation too. This is why hoarders (and I) don’t need to make nice neat stacks of orderly organization. We don’t have all our magazines in one pile, our bills in another, and a third for our tax forms because we don’t need to rely on neatness to find our stuff.

We know that our November issue of Fine Books & Collections is on that stack on the left, under the fuzzy duck bank, about half-way down, just under the folder with our tax forms. We can see it there. We can produce it anytime we like.

And I can tell you just how it got there — along with the duck bank and how and where I bought him…

If hoarding is a real syndrome, I just may have to call in sick tomorrow.

Tolin and Frost have co-authored “Buried in Treasures,” a self-help book about compulsive hoarding syndrome which I’m sure mom will buy me after she reads this.

I guess it’s one of those collections that unintentionally begins from a accumulation of items of relative disposability and inconsequence, these coffee mugs. I mean, I don’t even drink coffee on a regular basis. While usually perceived as both a staple for both the gaming nerd and the artist-on-deadline, coffee just makes me more crampy and irate than usual. Nonetheless, I still need something to take my cocoa and tea from when all of the skulls of my enemies are in the dishwasher.

Like neckties, the coffee mug is sort of an icon of adulthood (even if it does contain something with marshmallows floating in it). You wouldn’t be hard pressed to find a coffee mug with just about anything you’d like on it, usually for less than five bucks, and that’s probably where it all began - two Star Trek that mugs changed color according to temperature, either uncloaking a Romulan Warbird or transporting the away team to some rocky planetside adventure where the new guy would invariably get killed by something with a funny forehead.

While I eschew mugs with ‘clever’ slogans or sarcastic remarks on them, anything with flowers or babies, or those unfortunate mugs shaped like nude torsos (such as in this respetable collection), they certainly dominate the species. Coffee mugs are indeed a minefield where poor taste might explode in your face at any given moment, since just about anyone can make one. Somewhere in the world, there’s collection of people large enough to have made ‘Jeff Foxworthy’ a household name. I figure that the tasteless coffee mugs come from somewhere in that vicinity.

My personal favorite mug is the Mr. Incredible mug, which I actually braved the Disney store to purchase. It’s about the size of a cantaloupe and cast on a slant, making it appear as if it’s moving at ultra-high speed. When I drink cocoa, I DRINK COCOA. You’d better stand back and wear goggles. I take two packets, baby.

Perhaps a runner up to the action mug is this alphabet mug, featuring an octopus. One of the many delights that graced the dollar store shelves, and completely inexplicable, it’s the kind of gloriously ugly item that redefines your life for approximately 30 seconds. You know, until you regain faith in a higher power and stop excreting things, in spite of the item in question. It was nestled between an array of alphabet mugs which covered an eclectic selection of the alphabet, and a few things that probably weren’t letters as much as they were lexical approximations of the sound that the soul makes when it leaves the body. Of note, but left behind, was the ‘I is for ice-pop’ mug, which due to the limited paint palette, was an unsettling fleshy color. Imagine your way from there. ‘I’ is for impossibly suggestive. For the record, yeah, I keep pencils in the octo-mug. I don’t generally put my lips on things I find in dollar stores.

Closet cleaning this past weekend revealed this hand-painted mug that my former girlfriend made for me while I was madly in love with her and she didn’t know it yet. Using the dorm’s communal oven to bake on the glaze, and subsequently forgetting that she’d left a mug in there for me and causing a significant cloud of toxic smoke, it was nonetheless an important item in our relationship. Sure, it was stolen from the dining hall, but we had to do SOMETHING to justify the ridiculous price for the mediocre education. I still have a small crate of misappropriated forks, and some part of an elevator that probably was really important at some point.

My friend Beth recently sent me a lovely handmade mug from Dovetail, one of the many excellent craftspeoples that can be found on Etsy. If you want to lower your standards a bit, CafePress has over 53,000 user-designed mugs that cover just about everything in existence, usually with excessive spelling errors - though they DO have an exceptional collection of squid-themed liquid receptacles. Just about 90% of every store you walk into should have a coffee mug for sale, promoting your love of something-or-other to anyone who might pass by your otherwise dreary cubicle.

I’m off to consume three gallons of cocoa from my favorite mug. It’s one of the more comforting things I can hope to retreat to nightly.

I’ve written a few times about collecting and caring for vintage linens. Several times I’ve taken a chance on otherwise beautiful stained linens on sale for a dollar or two, hoping I can remove the stain and restore the piece to perfection. Sometimes I’m successful, other times not so much. If, like me, you’ve got a few tablecloths, napkins and other scraps with beautiful embroidery or lace work, but can’t use them because of a big old stain, here are a few ideas for salvaging the good parts.

I was once in a shop full of clothes made from vintage damask tablecloths. As you can imagine, there were very feminine looking dresses, lots of dressy kids clothes - not much in the way of menswear. An old tablecloth can be used in lieu of most fabrics to make things like throw pillows, napkins, purses and curtains. Brightly printed tablecloths from the fifties and sixties can be turned into colorful stuffed bears and dolls. You can cut the embroidered corner of a tablecloth, napkin or tea towel into the shape of an oval or square. Turn the edges under and sew the embroidered piece onto a throw pillow. The embroidery can also be framed and hung on a wall. Doilies can also be sewn onto a pillow or turned into wall art. A doily can even be incorporated into a child’s dress as a pretty ornament.

A trip to a crafts store can yield all sorts of ideas for your damaged vintage linens. Buy a lampshade frame and cover it with a colorful old apron. Buy a picture frame and turn it into a pretty padded frame. Make a plain, cardboard hatbox into a thing of beauty by covering it with luxurious vintage fabric. The possibilities are endless!

When most people hear chalkware or plaster they think of those funny animal pieces and rip-offs of comic characters — the cheap prizes hawked by carnival barkers. Or maybe you think of those more modern retro kitschy pieces by Miller Studios, like white poodle heads plaques or kitty string holders, but that’s not all there is to collect in vintage plaster pieces.

Even at the circus and those old country fairs there were more delicate home decor pieces to be found. Some, like my harlequin Great Dane dog statue are really lovely. But there’s more than statues in the world of plaster & chalkware.

While many collectors seem to compete for the known names, the really old statue pieces or rare lamps, I find myself adopting lots of plaster for my walls. (You can literally plaster the walls!)

For some reason, floral pattern wall plaques are not in vogue. I’m often surprised at the number of these beauties I find — often nice quality pieces with wire hangers not staples on their backs. So home with me they go. They are inexpensive and what else would be better for my garden themed kitchen wall?

Well, if you prefer roosters or anthropomorphic veggies and fruits, you can find those too.

For the bathroom, you’ll find plenty of fish & mermaids… Even new pieces in retro styles. As most bathrooms are small, you can decorate an entire room with very few trips to look for them.

Again, Miller Studios is one name to search for, but you’ll find many of these in thrift shops, flea markets and neighborhood sales.

Little shelves are very common, and I put them to use in nearly every room (where else can you put the million and one small candle holders and vases on acquires?)

Currently I am working on a display of small white & off-white plaster shelves which when grouped together will hold a multitude of not-too-shabby and very chic tea cups, strands of glass beads, and little glass jars of buttons and marbles. Right now, all I am missing is the wall space (it’s always at a premium here) and when it’s done I’ll show it to you.

One of my favorite pieces — so loved for its uniqueness — is this 15 inch tall plaster piece with metal mesh background. The motif is romantic, with lady & gent in their powdered wigs, and the frame has very French looking golden scrolls and flourishes, but the metal mesh marks this piece as all 70’s baby. (I’m on the look-out for it’s mate — I just know there’s at least one more like this!)

Since chalkware and plaster of Paris items are fragile, no matter what their age, many pieces were damaged and thrown away. Surviving items may have chips and/or paint problems. Some collectors will make repairs, especially quick touch ups with paint, but I prefer the charm of a ‘flawed’ piece.

The two vintage lady wall plaques (shown in the grouping above) have lost much of their original paint. It’s just peeled right off, exposing the white plaster beneath. But I love them as they are. And this German Shepherd dog stature (a whopping 15+ inches tall) was given to us by a dealer who knows what a soft touch I am for old plaster collectibles. Sans his ears, she thought we might fix him up, but neither hubby or I have found the heart yet — nor the time.

Perhaps one day soon, when we stop scrounging for more plaster items to bring home, we’ll find the time to give him new ears. (I think the odds are more likely we’ll find him a nice hat to wear.)