Sadly, I have now reached the point in my life where I own more items than I can manage. I have always fancied myself as a collector of fine things, but I may be overestimating my belongings. In plain English, I love stuff. Old, new, antique, bright and shiny off the press, I love it all. Recently, I began weeding out my things. I felt that by only keeping what I was using, wearing, appreciating and cherishing, I could make my life better. It only takes catching a few minutes of “Hoarders” now and again to sober oneself up to what can happen when you can’t part with anything.
My possessions are organized, but so much is put away in boxes and cupboards because I only have so many walls, shelves, horizontal display areas and floor space. And then there are the clothes. My closets and dresser drawers can only hold so many outfits, shoes, scarves and purses, yet I still can’t resist buying something new and fabulous, especially if it’s a bargain.
“My first collection started when I was very young.”
When I first began de-cluttering my life, I started with my wardrobe. I went through every hanger and assessed whether I should keep the garment or not. I read somewhere that if you haven’t used it or worn it in a year, you should donate it. That is a lovely thought, but what if you couldn’t fit into it a year ago and you might lose weight next year? The same person also said that you should donate garments to charity if they are no longer in fashion. There’s something very wrong about that statement. What kind of conscience, or lack thereof, would allow you to push your old, dated, out of style clothing on somebody who is trying to upgrade their sad life and start over? Do you really think it would help someone who's down on their luck to show up at a job interview in my discarded M. C. Hammer pants? I am very proud to say that I was able to edit my wardrobe to a reasonable amount and now there is actually room in my closet to slide the hangers back and forth. I was on a roll.
Next, I went through my kitchen cabinets. This journey was bittersweet. I was reminded that a single woman living alone probably does not need every size of Pyrex baking dish, multiple sizes of cake pans plus duplicate muffin tins and pie plates. I am no longer requested to make dozens of cupcakes or cookies for the class party or after the game. I haven’t made a pie since Beyoncé was still part of Destiny’s Child and the chances of me baking a sheet cake during the balance of my life are as remote as me climbing Mount Everest. I boxed up a ton of cooking gear and gave it away. It felt good.
The next part was really difficult. I am talking about my collections. For most of my life I have created collections of certain items. I would collect until I was satisfied that my assemblage was complete and then I would go on to the next thing. Each collection earned a permanent place in my heart and in my home. My first collection started when I was very young. I collected poodles. There were a lot of them left over from the '50s and they were easy to find in thrift shops. I had ceramic, porcelain and glass poodles up the yin-yang. My parents bought me a white French provincial hutch/desk combo so I could display their cuteness in my teenage room. When I left home for college, my former room morphed into a guest room; a very poodle-less one, I might add. My boxed up collection has stayed with me through every stage of my life since, but sadly they never fit into the cool vibe of my first apartment or my first home after I married. I could have put my poodles in the family room, but to be fair, they would have had to share space with bowling trophies, so we compromised and used the space for family photos.
My next fixation was on English tea and candy tins. The designs on them were so beautiful and when I was collecting them, they were very inexpensive. I had a shelf built below the ceiling in my dream home kitchen and displayed my gorgeous tins, mostly from the early to mid 20th century, around the entire perimeter of my kitchen. When the nest was empty and the house was sold, I carefully boxed most of them up and stored them with the poodles in the garage of my much smaller condo.
I have gone through the same exercise with decorative bowls, candlesticks, vintage jewelry and antique linens, just to name a few. When space gets tight, I box most of it up, but display and use what I can. Because I am committed to simplifying my life, I took all the boxes down and started going through them with the intention of culling these collections down to only a few important pieces each.
You know how it is when you start going through stuff, it takes a lot longer than you think because you visit each piece as you pull it out and unwrap it. You remember where you found it and fall in love with it all over again. My middle daughter was visiting that day, and as I joyfully showed off one of my favorite floral tins, these words popped out of her mouth instantaneously: “99 Cent Sale when you die!” Very funny, I thought. So I pulled out a stunning pair of embroidered satin pillow cases from the 1920s. “99 Cent Sale when you die!”, she chirped. I pretended that it didn’t bother me because I know that when I DO die, my girls will be very sentimental and want to keep everything to remember me by. Right?
So the end of the saga goes like this. I couldn’t part with anything. The poodles, the tins, the china... I still have every piece. I pulled out some of my favorites from every collection and placed them around my home. I put everything else in a storage locker nearby. The plan is to rotate my collections like the museums do. It’s worth it to me to be able to touch and feel and appreciate these pieces of the past that each has a story. I feel that I have succeeded because I have much more storage space in my house now and my stuff is very well organized.
Although I always said that I didn’t want to burden my children with cleaning out a morass of my worldly possessions when I die, now I do. I like to consider it a part of the Circle of Life.
So for now, I feel very content. I have honed my material world down to a very respectable amount and passed a lot of really good and useful things on to others.
I don’t know what will happen to all my treasures after I am gone, but for now I love having every item within my reach to love and admire when I feel like it. So there! I hope you don’t find me to be too eccentric or whack-a-doo after this article. Oh wait. I forgot... that’s why you love me!
Be watching for another NEW and hopefully hilarious slice-of-my-life episode next week. And here’s a hint: If there is no article and they run something titled “Miss Fifi, In Memoriam”, be advised that there will also be a completely fabulous 99 Cent Sale going on shortly in Los Angeles.
