Steve Housewright, a self-professed guitar hoarder, writing for minimalism.life:
Guitar hoarding is still around. Social media is filled with people who share their latest instrument purchases. It’s an illness and they lovingly know it! People post photos of guitar collections that fill entire rooms. Once the guitar-collecting compulsion takes hold, you seldom can give it up—unless you can find a way to put it to good use.
That’s what I did in my mid-40’s. I took a more minimalist approach in my lifestyle during the 1990’s after reading the book “Voluntary Simplicity” by Duane Elgin. In the past two decades, I haven’t really given up buying guitars and ukuleles, but now I buy them to share on loan or as gifts to kids that are with out. At any given time, I probably have 90 to 100 instruments in circulation to kids so they can take music lessons and practice at home. It’s a way of putting my hoarding tendencies to good use and I still get the pleasure of finding new instruments.
Personally, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I have decided to keep only a few guitars around at a time. I’m a hobbyist and currently have no need for a bunch of guitars, no matter how much fun it is to buy them.
That being said, if you are someone who doesn’t want to stop buying guitars, I like the idea of giving some away or loaning them to people who would use them. Even then, having 90 to 100 instruments to keep track of seems like a lot!