It’s an ideal time to clear out clutter
If your house is like mine, it’s in transition. The old year is on its way out, and another year is creeping in. Rooms are full of new gifts, decorations and the clutter of a busy family. Add to that the bounty of a year spent digging through flea markets and tag sales, and things can get messy.
That’s why, when the time comes to undecorate the tree and put everything away until next Christmas, I like to look around and take stock. Before I put my house back in order, I focus on the contents of each room.
Am I really going to read that stack of books in the corner? Or are they going to make me feel guilty each time I look at them? This might be a good time to pass a few along to friends or donate them to my favorite charity.
And then there are the little odds and ends scattered around the house. Just because I spend a lot of time in junk stores and flea markets doesn’t mean I want my home to look like one.
If there is too much stuff everywhere, if my treasures are closing in on me, I need to choose what I love the most and either put the rest away, or get rid of it. What I can’t bear to let go or don’t have room for, needs to be stored for safekeeping.
The retail calendar begins each year by celebrating our need to hang on to what we’ve got. The after-Christmas sale flyers feature plenty of storage options; shelving, bins, drawers, label makers. As long as we’ve got a place to store our excess, there is a way to organize it.
And if we run out of room in our own basements and barns, there is always the option of renting space at one of the self-storage units around town.
If something has to go, there are plenty of places to donate it. Charity thrift stores gear up for end-of-the-year donations by people looking for tax write-offs. (Of course, die-hard junkers know the shelves of their favorite thrift stores will be full of after-Christmas donations, but let’s not think about that right now.) And, if there is room, castoffs can be stored until garage-sale weather comes along.
My New Year’s to-do list this year includes a lot of clearing out.
I’m going to take a long, hard look at the contents of my closet, my office and my storeroom.
This can be dangerous work. It’s hard to sort through a stack of books without doing a little reading. Nothing makes the hours fly like a good book.
And, because I’m the kind of sentimental softie who gets attached to something simply because I have a happy memory of the day I wore it, it isn’t always easy to get rid of the things in my closet.
That leaves the storeroom. I don’t have a place at a storage facility because I don’t want the temptation more space would bring. (I already hear someone whisper “Rosebud” whenever I open my storeroom door.) But I’m determined to get that organized and thinned out, too.
A new year means new adventures, and wonderful hours spent with interesting old things and new things that were discovered in interesting places.
Like many of you, over the next 12 months I’m sure I’ll bring home more than I should, and gather far more books than I can read. I’ll hang on to sweaters and skirts until my closet is bulging with clothes. I’ll put too many things into the storeroom thinking I can make something wonderful out of them in the future. And at the end of the year, I’ll take inventory and do it all over again.
A gift stitched with love
After reading in the Dec. 3 Treasure Hunting column about Jean Johnson of Colville, who makes gifts of the samplers she stitched for more than 50 years, Irene Silverman wrote to tell me about a special gift she is making for her mother.
“The sampler I am making my mother will serve dual purposes,” she wrote.
Silverman’s mother is elderly and because she is originally from the Ukraine, as she ages she is having a difficult time remembering the English alphabet. “After seeing a sampler I made for my sister, my mother asked that I make her one to help her write,” Silverman wrote. “I am making it as a pillow, as her walls are already covered with the many crossstitch sayings I have sent her.”
I like to think that many of the vintage items we find may have started out as the kind of gift Silverman is making for her mother. And that’s why they call it treasure hunting.