The Stuff of Life

I have been accused as being overly neat and tidy by more than one person in my lifetime. If you take a look around my house, you will definitely not see neat and tidy. But you will see some resemblance of clean. Depending, of course, on what day you see it.

I have papers piled up on my desk, clippings out of magazines on things I need to remember, do or make and unfinished projects cluttering up every conceivable flat, horizontal surface. I have papers and photos clipped onto racks, pinned to cork boards and held fast to metal surfaces with magnets. My house is a hot mess, to be exact.

Every room is cluttered with memories of travel and happy times. I have ledges full of antique fans and typewriters, old wooden boxes, metal kitchen contraptions and vases of silk sunflowers, which, sadly, do not compare to the vibrance of real ones, and certainly not after the five years they've been up there. The place is, at best, a museum and at worst, a mind-bending and confusing cave of bits and pieces.

I am slowly (emphasis on slowly), dredging through said bits and pieces, cleaning out cabinets and emptying drawers, trying to reduce the sheer amount of things collected over my 40-odd years of fascination with stuff. I think I was a magpie in my former life, as I simply cannot resist trinkets.

I habitually clean the dusty old cave, at least twice a week. I vacuum and mop the tile floors, dust the horizontal services, wipe down all the countertops and fight the shower scum and mold. I move things around, replace things, take things down and throw things away. Every week, twice a week, I curse my addition to things, and swear I will stop collecting them and just be content with the mountains of things I already have. But, then I travel to Italy, and have to have that Pinocchio lithograph, and that olive oil container. I travel to Barcelona, and cannot live without the hand-glazed plate or the mosaic magnets. I go to Buenos Aires, and the cutest little painted monkeys on hand-made paper speak to me. I go to art festivals around the state and discover new, fun things that I trade or barter for.  I find one more basket, one more lamp, one more chair or one more book that I cannot refuse from thrift stores, because, my God, they're only a dollar! Every single thing I have has a story, and therefore, it is part of me, part of my experience and part of who I have become.

But, I'm not ready to pass some of them on to their new owners, or to the landfill or to the next thrift store. I'm not ready to give them all up yet. Some of them, yes. One more thing I won't have to dust, move, polish or look at anymore. One thing that the memories aren't climbing out of and making me remember something, good or bad.

As I get up from this infernal computer and prepare to clean, clean, clean for my "new year," I look around and am overwhelmed again by all of the stuff. But, I shall concentrate on the task at hand, and just confine to vacuuming, mopping, dusting, polishing and scrubbing.

And leave the memories where they sit.