{"id":525,"date":"2016-03-24T19:08:22","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T19:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/?p=525"},"modified":"2016-03-25T00:45:55","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T00:45:55","slug":"on-cutters-cutting-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"On Clutter’s Cutting Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cutter-1\"\"cutter-2\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s my mother again. On the left she\u2019s wearing her snappy sunglasses circa 1940. On the right, it\u2019s the 1950s and she\u2019s on our first dock at the cottage. Smokin\u2019 \u2018n fishin\u2019. I found these in a stack of family photos\u2026at the bottom of a huge Wal-Mart storage container\u2026in my late sister\u2019s jam cupboard\u2026that used to contain my family\u2019s individual ashes\u2026including my sister\u2019s cat George. (See November 2014 \u2013 \u201cNovember 1 \u2014 the Day of the Dead. Family Humour seems appropriate here.\u201d)<\/a> I\u2019m downsizing. No. I\u2019m trying to downsize.<\/p>\n

My husband says I\u2019ve got too much stuff. I\u2019ve known that for ages. After all, I am the person who stumbles around curating it all. Secretly, I\u2019ve been pitching and giving away treasures (books) and clothing for over a year. I can almost get my clothes into one cupboard. Maybe two. It is now possible to clear the kitchen counter and the table, and even sit in the chairs \u2013 given enough notice.<\/p>\n

The cookbooks still bulge from a sideboard also stuffed with tablecloths. Cookbooks with sentimental value are at the bottom of my \u201cComputer Stuff\u201d antique cabinet left to me by\u2026oh, never mind. The rest of the cookbooks are wedged into a kitchen cupboard. Most of my sister and mother\u2019s tchotchkes are gone. The phrase, \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t chose them,\u201d helped.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s become obvious how much guilt my mother was able to instil. \u201cAhh, my gramma\u2019s milk pitcher with the parrot drawing. Gramma sat that pitcher on the table every morning. Sigh.\u201d How could I now throw that jug of sighs out?<\/p>\n

But wait. Let\u2019s be clear here. My mother was abandoned by her mother Margaret, and raised by a mean old lady (Margaret\u2019s mother) during the Depression. My mother said absolutely nothing good about her mother or her grandmother. \u201cSome women should never have had children,\u201d is what she did say. So I don\u2019t know how I became the primary downsizer? Maybe my mother was trying to make a childhood for herself by saving these souvenirs.<\/p>\n

\"cutter-4\"\"cutter-3\"<\/p>\n

Anyone want a toothpick holder showing Victoria St. in Alliston, Ontario where my mother was sent to visit during summers? The picture on it is a bit blurry, but it\u2019s definitely the building currently housing the \u201cFast Cash\u201d store on Alliston\u2019s main drag. If I get rid of the gold-trimmed toothpick holder, now elevated to historical artefact, I\u2019ll be hit by a bolt of lightening. <\/p>\n

For 13 years, I\u2019ve been storing my sister\u2019s eclectic bits of china. My mother-in-law, Joy, came from a more prosperous background than ours. That\u2019s why I have pieces of silver sitting around in all their tarnished glory. I wasn\u2019t born to polish silver, or iron linens and no one else wants to either. You can\u2019t sell the stuff. Or give it away. <\/p>\n

Joy, has been able to guilt me from the grave. I still have her lace treasures. Why? She left hand written notes full of implied sighs.<\/p>\n

\"cutter-5\"<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t downsizing. Or even making things tidy like that woman proselytizing in her horrible book, \u201cThe life-changing magic of tidying up.\u201d The author is a Tidy-Nazi with a hard-core, humourless approach to a highly emotional job that you must break into stages. With even bigger breaks in-between. <\/p>\n

And why do non-cooks ask why I have so many frying pans, pots, knives and obscure kitchen tools? Well after 50 years of cooking and collecting, I have a working kitchen that gives me pleasure. Why would I want to get rid of any of it? Downsizing is the slippery slope to eating mush in an institution. They are not Homes. <\/p>\n

My eureka moment. I held a garden party for my women friends. It was also a fundraiser for Nicole Brooks\u2019 Vision — Obeah Opera. And a Jolly Way to get rid of some expensive, fragile china. <\/p>\n

\"cutter-6\"\"cutter-7\"<\/p>\n

The woman in the white dress singing in the left picture, conceived, wrote, composed and produced the whole Opera that she also stars in. No surprise. Nicole Brooks. I can\u2019t say no to her. Nicole commented on my apron. I gave it to her. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

The garden party was the perfect place for all those wrinkled linens and lace, and my mother\u2019s gilded dainty tea-cups. I used them to serve dynamite gin punch and extract even more donations than expected. We had a great time but unfortunately nothing broke so I was still stuck with it\u2026all. What then?<\/p>\n

\"cutter-8\"<\/p>\n

It was such a raucous good time tea party that my daughter, Maeve, decided to use the same theme for a bridal shower she\u2019s throwing. I\u2019ve packed up the party supplies, and have lined up more boxes in the hall near the door. They\u2019re full of Joy\u2019s crystal and china left to Maeve. Everything can go to her house. I\u2019ll even deliver it. <\/p>\n

And after her party, it can all go wherever Maeve wants it to go. But not back here. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t***<\/p>\n

After reading the article at the following link, I\u2019ve decided to get out of the downsizing business. It\u2019s nothing more than a fad, a social pressure and I refuse to give in to it any longer. Being called a Hoarder is the other social pressure. No one wants to be called a hoarder. I don\u2019t hoard. That was my sister.<\/p>\n

My clutter is a small collection of treasures to jog my memory, bring on a smile, sometimes a frown or a tear, and prompt me to think things out by writing about them. I still put stuff I don\u2019t like or want in a box out on the sidewalk on sunny mornings. By noon, every thing is gone. The sidewalk is a beach with the tide coming in and taking out all that personal history\u2026except the photographs. How do you get rid of the photos? Especially when they\u2019re your only link? Just think \u2013 if I hadn\u2019t kept the pictures, I wouldn\u2019t have those opening snapshots to set me off.<\/p>\n

With a big thank you to Chloe McCloskey who knew I would love this New York Times\u2019 article<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"cutter-1\"\"cutter-2\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s my mother again. On the left she\u2019s wearing her snappy sunglasses circa 1940. On the right, it\u2019s the 1950s and she\u2019s on our first dock at the cottage. Smokin\u2019 \u2018n fishin\u2019. I found these in a stack of family photos\u2026at the bottom of a huge Wal-Mart storage container\u2026in my late sister\u2019s jam cupboard\u2026that used to contain my family\u2019s individual ashes\u2026including my sister\u2019s cat George.<\/p>\n Read More...<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbaraboyden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}