The Psychology of Hoarding Journals (and Never Using Them)

The Emotional and Cognitive Roots of Collecting Your Favorite Notebooks

I recently posted a Tik Tok showing off my journal collection. I got a few comments like “consumerism final boss” and “this isn’t something to be proud of.” And to be honest, I think those criticisms are fair. I WAS overconsuming but I started collecting these years ago before I really had a sense of what I liked and what I didn’t. I don’t buy very many journals these days but this whole thing did stop and make me ask myself, “why in the world did I feel the need to get all these journals?”.

If you’re reading this right now, it’s probably because there’s a decent chance that you own at least one journal/notebook that you’ve never written in. More likely than not, you own a few. Maybe it’s still shrinkwrapped sitting in a drawer. Or maybe it’s one you’ve cracked open only once, told yourself it was too nice to use right now, and stuffed in that same drawer. Maybe it’s an entire stack that’s all different sizes, with different intentions, with different versions of a life you fully intended to live inside of them. I believe that this pattern is actually deeply human.

So why do people keep buying notebooks they don’t use and sometimes even while feeling bad about it?

To answer that, you have to step away from stationery culture entirely. You have to look at something much older and much broader: the psychology of collecting itself. Because notebook hoarding is a near perfect case study of how humans use objects to create order, regulate emotion, stabilize identity, and hold space for future selves. Especially during periods of uncertainty.

This essay isn’t about telling you to “use what you have.” It’s not about decluttering, shaming, or justifying consumption. Again, I am NOT justifying overconsumption. What I am trying to do is help you understand what unused journals are actually doing for you psychologically and why, once you see it clearly, the behavior stops looking irrational at all.

Why Humans Collect At All

Before notebooks, before stationery, before capitalism or Instagram or the idea of a “haul,” humans collected things. Collecting is not a modern glitch caused by marketing or weak self control. Archaeological evidence suggests that early humans curated objects well beyond immediate survival needs. Excavations from Upper Paleolithic sites reveal caches of ochre pigments, carved figurines, shells transported far from their original locations, and tools preserved long after they stopped being useful. Anthropologists generally agree that these early collections served symbolic and emotional purposes rather than purely functional ones. Objects became memory holders, markers of identity, and anchors to shared stories. Long before humans had writing systems, they used material culture to remember who they were and what mattered.

As societies grew more complex, so did the meaning of collections. In ancient civilizations, collections took institutional form. Temples and palaces stored objects not for daily use, but for continuity. In Mesopotamia, clay tablets were archived and preserved across generations. In Egypt, grave goods accompanied the dead into the afterlife. These collections weren’t practical in the narrow sense. They were attempts to make an overwhelming world feel graspable by holding a curated slice of it. To collect was to say: this is what matters, this is what endures, this is how I understand my place in things. Across cultures and centuries, the pattern repeats. When knowledge expands faster than understanding, when the world feels large or unstable, humans collect. Seen this way, collecting has always been less about possession and more about orientation.

Collecting As Control

If collecting has always helped humans orient themselves in a vast and unstable world, modern psychology helps explain how it does that so effectively. One of the strongest and most consistent findings in consumer psychology is that people gravitate toward possessions during periods of uncertainty. When the future feels unpredictable economically, emotionally, or creatively, objects become stabilizing forces and become fixed points in an uncertain landscape.

In a widely cited 2009 paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers Aric Rindfleisch, James Burroughs, and Nancy Wong describe possessions as sources of “psychological safety.” Their research suggests that people use objects to regulate anxiety and restore a sense of continuity when their sense of control is threatened. Possessions, in this sense, act as emotional anchors rather than mere utilities. What makes collecting especially powerful is that it provides control without consequence. Owning something is an act of agency that doesn’t require competence. You don’t have to be good at anything to buy a notebook. You don’t have to prove consistency, talent, or follow through. The act itself feels decisive without being risky.

Buying a journal feels like action. It feels adjacent to productivity. It feels like movement. But it doesn’t require vulnerability. You’re not buying paper. You’re buying the feeling that future clarity is still possible. To understand why unused notebooks are so tempting, so comforting, and so difficult to let go of, you have to look at what the brain is doing long before it’s ever bought.

That’s where anticipation comes in.

Why Anticipation Feels Better Than Use

A commonly misunderstood aspect of collecting is why using the object often feels less satisfying than acquiring it. Neuroscience offers a clear explanation: dopamine is more strongly associated with anticipation than with consumption. One of the most counterintuitive findings in modern neuroscience is that the pleasure we associate with objects rarely comes from owning or using them. It comes from what happens before we own them. From imagining and rehearsing a future interaction that hasn’t occurred yet.

In a series of influential studies, neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz demonstrated that dopamine neurons fire most intensely not when a reward is received, but when it is predicted (Schultz, 1998). The brain responds most strongly to the possibility of reward, not its completion. Psychologists Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson later expanded this idea through incentive salience theory, which distinguishes between “liking” something and “wanting” it (Berridge & Robinson, 1998). Wanting is driven by dopamine and anticipation. Liking is driven by the actual sensory or emotional pleasure of an experience. You can intensely want an object without deriving much pleasure from actually using it. Crucially, the two systems can operate independently.

Collecting thrives in this gap.

The act of choosing an object, imagining how it will be used, and mentally rehearsing the future it represents creates a rich anticipatory loop. That loop is neurologically rewarding even if the imagined future never arrives. Once the object is acquired, the loop collapses. The brain moves on.

This explains a pattern many notebook collectors recognize instantly:

• The notebook feels magical in the store.

• It feels precious at home.

• The first page feels intimidating.

• The next notebook suddenly feels appealing again.

This doesn’t mean collectors are chasing novelty mindlessly. It means their brains are doing exactly what human brains evolved to do: prioritize possibility over completion. Notebooks are especially powerful in this regard because they don’t just anticipate use, they anticipate becoming. When someone buys a new journal, they’re rarely imagining the physical act of writing. They’re imagining the state of mind that writing represents. Clarity. Consistency. Insight. A calmer internal landscape. The notebook becomes a proxy for all of that. That imagined future is neurologically potent.

Once you begin using a notebook, the imagined future gives way to reality. The object stops being a promise. This explains a pattern that shows up repeatedly in creative communities: people derive immense satisfaction from acquiring tools, planning systems, and blank materials and much less satisfaction from actually engaging with them. In the context of notebooks, anticipation allows people to feel aligned with their values without immediately confronting their limitations. The notebook holds the idealized version of the practice, untouched by fatigue, inconsistency, or doubt.

This is also why the next notebook can feel more tempting than the one already owned. The existing notebook has history or at least expectation. It carries pressure. The new notebook restores possibility. It resets the anticipatory loop. Importantly, this doesn’t mean anticipation is a trap to be avoided. Anticipation is a fundamental human capacity. It allows us to plan, and to hope, and to endure periods where action feels impossible. In a world that constantly demands results, that imagined future can be surprisingly sustaining. And this is where notebooks become uniquely complicated objects. Because unlike most collected items, notebooks don’t promise only enjoyment or status. They promise self-knowledge. Meaning. Transformation. This is where identity enters the picture.

Collecting as Identity Preservation

Anticipation explains why notebooks are acquired. Identity explains why they’re kept. Long after the excitement of buying fades, long after the imagined future grows distant, the notebook often remains on the shelf. Even unused, it continues to perform psychological labor. To understand that, you have to look at how humans use objects to stabilize identity over time.

Psychologist Russell Belk’s theory of the extended self argues that possessions become part of how people define who they are. According to Belk, the boundaries of the self don’t stop at the body. They extend outward into the things we own, we use, and we protect. Over time, possessions absorb meaning. They become repositories for memory and for effort and intention. This is why losing certain objects can feel strangely personal, even when their monetary value is low. A damaged photograph, a worn book, a notebook from a specific period of life. These aren’t just things. They’re containers for experiences that are difficult to store anywhere else. The object becomes a stand-in for parts of the self that would otherwise be intangible.

Belk emphasized that this process doesn’t require constant use. Possessions don’t have to be actively engaged with to remain psychologically charged. What matters is the story attached to them: why they were acquired, what they were meant to represent, and how they fit into a person’s sense of continuity over time. In this way, objects function as external memory systems. A notebook purchased during a hopeful phase may still carry that hope years later, even if it remains untouched.

Psychologist Daphna Oyserman’s work on identity-based motivation shows that when people feel distant from an identity they care about, they often rely on symbols to maintain continuity until action becomes possible again. Symbols allow people to preserve a sense of “this still matters to me,” even when behavior temporarily falls short. In this framework, a notebook doesn’t have to be used to be meaningful. Its presence alone can sustain identity. This reframes the unused notebook from evidence of avoidance to evidence of commitment that hasn’t expired. It also explains why people are reluctant to get rid of notebooks they haven’t used. Discarding the object can feel like discarding the identity it represents. For people who care deeply about self-understanding, creativity, or meaning, that can be emotionally costly.

So Why Do We Hoard Journals?

Because journals do something very few objects can do at once. They offer control without requiring action. In moments when life feels unstable, owning a journal creates a sense of preparedness. They reward anticipation more than use. They preserve identity without demanding performance. When you put these pieces together, journal hoarding stops looking like hypocrisy or some kind of moral failing. It looks like a predictable response to uncertainty and the desire to become someone with more clarity than the present moment allows. That doesn’t mean every journal needs to stay unused forever. It doesn’t mean reflection should remain theoretical. But it does mean that unused journals aren’t empty, and they aren’t meaningless. They’re evidence of intention. And if that’s all the energy you have for right now? Then that’s okay.

Now, understanding a behavior is not the same thing as endorsing it.

None of this is meant to justify endless consumption or to pretend that overbuying doesn’t have consequences. Stationery communities, like many hobby spaces, can normalize accumulation in ways that escalate. New releases, limited editions, aesthetic trends. There’s a difference between recognizing that unused journals hold psychological meaning and using that insight to avoid self-reflection about spending habits. One is understanding. The other is rationalization.

I do think overconsumption is a problem. This essay isn’t an argument for buying more journals. It’s an argument for understanding why the impulse exists in the first place. Once you understand it, you’re in a better position to decide what role collecting should play in your life.

If this post helped you or you find it interesting and you’d like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee. Little gestures like this keep this project going, and I’m deeply grateful for it. Thank you so much for reading.