The Legs Fall Off If You Move It

Oh, my.  So I got sick of packing, and figured I’d start going through some of my own stuff to weed out what I would keep from what I would donate.  It’s like going through one of those geological core samples.  Here’s the epoch where I thought I would make cards.  This is hilarious, because I don’t even send the pre-made kind.  Card stock, fancy papers, various stick on doodads?  To the giveaway pile.

Here’s the phase where I thought I would be a glass painter.  This is hilarious, because I can’t paint.  Glass?  To the giveaway pile.  Glass paint?  Um, I don’t know.  Let’s set that aside. 

Here’s the phase where I was evidently making a lot of something (what?) out of Styrofoam balls and raffia.  Those things were so happy to get out of the closet, they hopped into the box of their own volition.  I think I must have had the Styrofoam balls since we lived in Virginia, which was pre-1995.  Those, plus wallpaper and artificial flowers (seems like I like purple, and pink, and white … seems like I’m an eight year old girl?), some fabric, and one million other things. 

The part that made me start to worry about myself was the area under my work table.  There were:  enough empty paper towel tubes to MORE THAN FILL a copy paper box, even when stacked neatly, row by row, in my best OCD fashion.  And there was a comparable number of the less glamorous TP tubes.  And there was a bag FULL of giant Maxwell House coffee cans.  I can’t remember the last time we drank Maxwell House, or if we ever did, and I can’t imagine that it was ever in the FIVE POUND size.  Maybe I got these from somewhere else?  Dunno. 

So, point being, I filled up giant black trash bag (no longer suitable for yard waste, since Houston now requires these tiny little bags that will only hold a tablespoon or two of yanked out Bermuda grass and cost $8.5 million) after giant trash bag, and box after box with all of the above, plus ceiling tiles (good for bulletin board and cutting board making), index cards (more than 5 packs in each size known to man), clear glass Christmas ornaments (for abandoned decoupage idea), and on and on and on.  And on.  It was stunning, really.  And a little horrifying.  Am I a  hoarder?  Where is the line? 

And, that doesn’t start to scratch the surface of most of the fabric (incl yards of Pendleton wool circa late 1978, when I worked at Barbie’s Fabric Shop in Springfield, VA), or the patterns, or the magazines (dear Lord), or the yarn, or the books, or the Shiny Brite ornaments from a vintage ornament wreath-making phase, or the paper stuff I’ve saved up since the dawn of time.  I started on the paper stuff, but had to stop.  Right on top was a white paper bag, printed with pink roses, from Mae’s in Lexington, SC, where my grandfather would take my grandmother shopping for a new dress whenever she wanted.  He would sit and wait so patiently while she looked and tried on whatever Mae’s had in brown or tan or taupe or beige, and he would tell her she looked pretty in all of them.  And she would pick one, which he would buy for her (she never carried money), and then they would go to lunch.  So, I took this bag, and I put it in the giveaway box, because the roses are pretty and it’s old enough to be officially called ephemera, but then I took it out.  But then I thought, “Well, I’ll still be able to see it at the store every day,” so I put it back in the box.  But then I thought, “But what if somebody BUYS IT?!?!” and I snatched it out of the box and put it back in the drawer where it has been for I don’t know how long, and that was the end of that little project.  

So, you tell me.  Sick hoarder, eight year old girl, or what?

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