collections of things you don't want or need

How many people, I wonder, end up with whole collections of Things They Don't Want Or Need?  With me, it appears to be monkeys.  Now, I'm not a monkey person.  I don't hate monkeys, but I don't love them either.  To me, monkeys are just ... there.  I used to be able to take them or leave them.  Nowadays, if they're in bulk, I prefer to leave them.

A couple of Christmases ago, somebody gave me a toy monkey.  Mmmmmm, what to do with it? I put it on the window sill in my bathroom.

This past Christmas I received a pink monkey on a swing.  I hung that on a doorknob.

One week later, I received two little intertwined monkeys, one white and one black, bearing crowns.  They had a little label attached telling me they were William and Katherine, and to confirm it even more thoroughly Will's and Kate's wedding date was also there (actually, these monkeys were sort of cute, and I figure they could be worth something in years to come!).  I haven't worked out where to put these monkeys yet.  Any suggestions?   What?  No.... definitely not there!

I have two friends who also got suckered into having collections.  One was given a little ornamental frog.  She sat it on the top of her computer screen.  A year later and she has fifteen of the little critters sitting around her work station.  Because of that first frog, people keep giving her more.  She has never liked frogs.

Another friend has accumulated a group of unicorns.  She says her mistake was putting on display that first unicorn present from her rainbow-teddy-Barbie loving mother.  From then on, it was open slather come present-giving time.  She has been inundated with unicorns of all sizes, shapes, and colours.   "I hate unicorns," she bleated to me. 

If I had just one monkey, it would be okay, but I'm scared that one monkey will breed and breed and breed, and I'll end up with hundreds.  I do hope I've seen my last monkey - to be fair, I can live with the ones I have now - but judging from the experience of my friends, I somehow doubt if my 'collection' is going to stop at three.