Photography by Suzy Gorman
It’s spring, and with the season comes the rite of cleaning and my annual rant about things. I have too many. I am overwhelmed by objects of my one-time affections.
When your house is on the small side—like mine and the three houses featured in this issue—you have to pick and choose carefully among your possessions. No warehouse-sized space with endless shelving on a lower level awaits pieces you decline to show. Closets are more Fibber McGee and Molly than organized. Every time you stroll through a store, you have to seriously ponder where that item you suddenly can’t live without will live in your house.
And that’s just the stuff you choose. What about the gifts? Think you can just roll them into your next garage sale? You can’t. I know that sinking feeling when you see gifts you have given put up for a pittance.
I just spent a day trying to declutter our cabin in the country. I took a step toward the typesetter’s box, a “California job case” that was a gift from my father when I was in graduate school. I remember having to learn where every single piece of type was placed in that box. Now its slots are stuffed with old campaign buttons (my favorite is for Marion Barry, D.C.’s erstwhile mayor) and a variety of letters in assorted fonts, including a type set from Advertising Age, my first job in journalism. The set was a giveaway on the day the magazine entered the computer age. I can’t get rid of that. Ever.
Next to it is the framed piece of music titled “Beside a Babbling Brook,” a not-so-subtle gift from an old boyfriend. Since the giver is long gone, that’s a Goodwill donation.
Then my brother stops by with a glass Tom’s peanut jar from the 1940s in his hands. Well, no way I’m letting that treasure slip by. So I start searching for a few inches of empty counter space. Could I get rid of the antique wooden dough bowl? Nah. What about the beautiful spice cabinet from my niece Cissy? Never gonna happen. The cast-iron lamb mold? The corner cabinet my brother gave me decades ago? Nope. So that leaves, um, the microwave. Hmmm, that could be a problem.
So like every accumulator out there, I start looking for an unconventional storage spot. Unfortunately, the top of the fridge is already crowded with the casserole dish that’s too big to fit in my oven but can hold salad for 60. Aha—there’s a tin from an antique mall that has no meaning or real worth. Gone. I’ve done my part.
I’m still overwhelmed with things. If only I didn’t feel such ardor for so many items. But I do. And I so wish I didn’t.
