Wednesday, May 27, 2009

There's Too Much Stuff

My husband and I are polar opposites when it comes to "stuff." He is a collector, from a family of collectors; at my first family gathering during that tense dating period, his mother asked me, "Now what do YOU collect?" And I had to say, "Nothing." And I liked that, because I come from a family who never threw one thing out, be it a coupon for a product that no grocery store has carried for more than thirty years, to old sugar packets, to clothing long past its "use-by" date. Towering piles of stuff was all I saw until I moved out and into my own digs. My college dorm room was like a monk's cell; my first apartment, shared with an eminently sensible woman of similar inclinations, looked like a Japanese rock garden. Even when David and I moved into our first home, he hadn't really shown his true colors; he didn't start his first collection until a year or so into our marriage, when it was really too late for me to move out. He collected space toys, which really are the coolest things, especially the antiques from the 1940s and 195os.

When he had bought every single ray gun there was to buy, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, I thought, he was done. No more collection. By this time I had a one-year-old, and his STUFF was accumulating at a fast clip. But a few years ago, a new obsession was born: souvenir china from the town where we live in Massachusetts. And then he branched out into neighboring towns — we had milk pitchers commemorating the Centennial of Easthampton; saucers saluting the graduates of Smith College, 1923; and vases from Greenfield's Founder's Day, 1944.

Good Lord, I thought. It never ends. And it didn't. He moved on to glass bottles, which take up a lot of room. But imagine my horror when I heard a cackle of glee from the office where our computer lives; he had a new collection a’bornin’. And this one is truly bizarre (to me, I stress): tiny replicas of food, mostly Japanese, on eensy-weensy serving trays with appropriate utensils to accompany them. I've shown some here; that circle in front of the tray is a quarter, for scale.

There are what seems like millions of miniature dinners on our kitchen table and more in our bedroom. And as I was about to put the hammer down on this new accumulation of STUFF, I realized that I have an entire closet full of yarn. Literally, a closet. Look at this:

Yarn, needles, patterns, books, knitting bags, magazines . . . and that's not all. I have fabric and a sewing machine. I have a spinning wheel and a garbage bag full of fleece. And I have books and books and books on crafts. I'm guilty, I realized, just as guilty. The difference is that I don't display my crafts — because I'm from the school of process knitters who give things away just for the pleasure of being able to enjoy the making. We all have our stuff, proudly displayed or hidden away for private delight. I am giving myself the pleasure of displaying my crafts, starting now. I'm embarking on the Tiny Tote (pictured on page 76) in Sew What! Bags by my friend Lexie Barnes; skill level: Newbie. I'll keep you updated on my progress; check out the book (which I love) because it has lots of bags for you to put your STUFF in!

Amy Greeman, Storey Publicity Director

3 comments:

Valerie Peterson said...

My mother has a stash of those little silica gel packets that read, "DO NOT EAT." She feels one day they will be indispensable...

Sarah Buttenwieser said...

I thought I owned books, books I read (as a grad student in fiction writing) but when my to-be husband came over to my house (on our first date) & saw my books, he reframed the experience: "What a great collection of contemporary fiction you have." My eyes should have been open, but love is blind...

Nice post!

Melanie Jolicoeur said...

With my rather short attention span I get into collecting something for a month or two and then lose interest. So rather than full-fledged collections I end up with dozens of disparate "groupings" around the house...robots, glass bottles, religious statuary, a couple of miniature Eiffel Towers...

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