The Things we Keep

I helped my friend Deborah move last week. We quickly transitioned from the stage of lovingly holding treasures and thinking about the memories they evoked, to wanting to torch the whole house, crushed by the sheer volume of accumulated stuff.

I felt those same sensations when my family moved two years ago. On the final exhausted, emotional morning, my carport was full of piles that hadn't made the first, second, or third purges, but simply could NOT come to the new house with us in the end.

Yet today, I still have too much stuff.

Both my friend's life of late and mine are examples of what we already knew-- the words painted on the wall at my old house-- "The best things in life aren't things." 

We get it.

Yet still, we do have THINGS, which is never more clear than when we must move them from one place to another.

I wanted to help Deborah more than I did, because choosing what to keep and what to donate is extremely personal. The humblest item could be full of meaning, while the most expensive isn't.

For example, one of my family's treasures is a big brown plastic mixing bowl with a handle and a spout.  It used to have a buddy, a slightly smaller orange counterpart, until Shadow chewed it up a few years ago.

These bowls have always reminded me of my childhood, a time when I felt nurtured and safe. I remember my dad sitting in his brown and orange rocking chair in his pj's, chowing down on multiple scoops of ice cream from the orange bowl, while wielding an enormous spoon.

That orange bowl took me right back to the 70's. To unsupervised kids making ice cream floats in tall glasses, always adding extra Coke as we drank them down. To roaming the neighborhood. To four square in the driveway and kick ball in the street. To bikes with banana seats, jaunts to 7-11, and the hot walk to the pool in bare feet. To figuring out how to navigate the culture of growing up.

The big brown bowl reminds me of popcorn, and watching movies with my mom and a string of friends and boyfriends on our plaid couch in the early 80's. To a nascent social life, still in the security of my home. To sleepovers, siblings, first kisses, and Saturday Night Live.

Today, when Margaret makes popcorn for one of our Survivor marathons, she always reaches for the brown bowl. She knows it's impossible to pop every kernel, that the good pieces always run out too soon, and that even though we pass the bowl back and forth between three people now, not four, it represents both her past and her present. I have a feeling that as long as the dogs never get a hold of the bowl, it will end up in her home when she is an adult.

To most eyes, the bowl is insignificant and even ugly. It does not give me the same thrill of promise and orderliness and beauty I get when I browse the matching housewares in a Target aisle.

But to my eyes, the big brown bowl means family.

What is something that you keep that would not mean anything to outside eyes?

Martha, I Hardly Knew Ya

Just got my new Home Decorators Collection catalog. I love to look through all of the furniture in there that ranges from Mission style simplicity, to Rococo (!), to wacky pieces like the unforgettable "chair shaped like a hand." HDC fits the bill for inexpensive furniture in pretty much any style. All items need assembly, which helps keep prices down. I am more of a peruser than a buyer because I live in a house full of chairs and am trying to get rid of things, not add things, but I really like some of their items.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a lovely new collection on the cover by Martha Stewart Living! Now I know Martha has her upscale furniture line, and that she tried a line at Kmart, but this is yet another collection. There were some really cute items like this bedroom set:




And this side table comes in lovely colors plus an unfinished version you can paint yourself:

Her rugs are gorgeous, too.

This dresser is lovely, but at $799 plus shipping, doesn't that seem quite steep for something that comes Ikea-style flat in a box? Just imagine the arguments my husband and I could have trying to put THIS together:



Oh, and one more thing. This desk has some little vases on it that Martha has dubbed ...

"Menage a Trois Glass Bud Vases."

Really, Martha? In all of your infinite wisdom and experience, you couldn't come up with another way to describe them?

It's a Wrap

Big goings-on over here. First of all, my beautiful new Chevy Traverse passed a big test--thrifting! While car shopping, I had 2 major requirements:

Enough cargo space for thrift shop purchases (who wants to have to borrow a pickup truck when you could just shove whatever in the back of the car?)

and

Power Windows so that I could chat with the adorable 6 year old boy on our street who stands by his mailbox waving as I come in and out of the neighborhood. When he was on my driver’s side (coming into the neighborhood) I rolled down my window to chat, but when he was on the passenger side (leaving) I’d be too lazy to do the across-the-car-reach-and-crank and I'd feel guilty for blowing him off.

So, I got to greet little Daniel last week with a simple push of the button, AND I shoved a major purchase into the Traverse on Monday with no ill effects.

Wooohoo!

The purchase? Two large white laminate cabinets ($18/ea.) for our basement storage room. Tom was less than thrilled. He is the same one who actually said to me, wait for it… “Why do you need so much room in the new car? Don’t we already have everything we need?” Silly man.

When he saw the monster cabinets sitting in the carport, he groaned, and I knew I had the challenge of making them an indispensable part of Chez See.

On Tuesday, Molly was “sick,” so I missed work, parked her in front of the tv and got to work in the basement. I pulled every single box, bin and piece of furniture out of there, checked and sorted all the contents, and consolidated in order to make more room. Some items were super heavy—military trunks, dressers, a foosball table, toolboxes, and bins full of rollerblades not touched since I was fun and single. My back is still screaming.

You may be asking, “If you are bringing more storage into the basement, why did you need to purge first? Well, my vision for the cabinets was to make a gift-wrapping station. Let it be known I’m neither a good wrapper nor a good gifter, so I might not really need a designated space for this, but that’s beside the point.

In addition, all of our wrapping supplies have been happily ensconced with the dust bunnies under the guest bed for 6 years bothering no one, but you can’t stop a woman with a vision. So, in ADDING the cabinets and the wrapping supplies to the basement, I had to SUBTRACT other things.

Chairs went to the shed. My old teaching supplies went to the recycling bin, and a huge pile of junk formed for our Water Project yard sale.

The result? This:

Went to:












I know I could have cuted it up a lot more, but I decided to only use stuff that was already languishing in our storage room. The painting of my grandparents’ house was done by my mother in high school, the huge lamp is awaiting a make-under, and the ribbon holder was my mom's. I even have her brass turtle ashtray from when she would sneak a smoke late at night, thinking we didn't know. These are things I didn't want to get rid of, but they don't really fit in elsewhere in the house.



Don't you just love my little Sunday School drawing of my family?

One cabinet is for for gift bags, tissue paper and wrapping paper, and the other side has my fabric scraps.

So much fun!

Of course, now I have to deal with the yard sale pile:

Anybody need a tiki torch?