Admit it, some time shortly after you turned 21, you had a collection of empty wine bottles above the kitchen cabinets. Dusty, greasy bottles if your house was like ours. We’re assuming your collecting skills, if not your display tactics, have gotten a little more sophisticated. So today we’re going to tackle displaying your collection of PEZ dispensers, rubber bands or china figurines.

Stealth attack. You bought that one frog figurine because you thought it was cute. Next thing you know, your friends and family have inundated you with frog statues, frog mugs and a couple that even croak. At first you kept them all together until you realize being called “the crazy frog person” was cutting into your love life. So go scattershot. Use the mug as a pencil holder on your desk, and return a couple figurines to their natural habitat by nestling them among the leaves of your houseplants. Put one in the basket with the spare toilet tissue in the bathroom. Soon you will be the crazy person with the frog décor instead of the crazy frog person. Much more dateable.

Unnatural history. Victorians collected butterflies, beetles and other stuff(ed critters) and turned them into beautiful displays. An action figure with cape unfurled can stand in as a butterfly or toy car with doors open as a beetle. And the best thing about keeping your collection in a shadow box or vitrine? No dusting. It’s very hard to get all the dust out of the grooves on the handle of a light saber.

Get fresh. Just because you have 72 antique radios doesn’t mean you have to listen to all of them at once - the neighbors will definitely complain. And you don’t have to keep them all out at once. Rotating your collection, changing which items you keep out and which you store, will let you look at your things with fresh eyes. And leave you a little more room to move around.

Whatever it is you collect (and why ever you decided to collect that), we want to know how you display your knicks and your knacks - help us start a collection of comments.