Collections

I need to make room in my apartment for new collections. Since retiring I have some new interests, like reading biographies, learning more about my city, and keeping personal journals, so I need to make space for books and other things these interests require. I reviewed my collections in hopes of identifying things to discard. I identified two categories: the “somewhat useless” that can be trimmed back, and the “can’t live without them” that are things to keep.

Somewhat Useless Most of the Time:

1.Spare buttons and threads. These are the extras that often come with new clothes, like blouses or pants. I have hundreds of these in a big cookie container, most in little plastic bags, but have never used them. Actually, once I did: my six-year-old grand-daughter seemed at a loss for what to do when visiting me one day, and I gave her this container. She enjoyed sorting and organizing the buttons – just like I did with my grandmother’s collection when I was six or seven. I guess I can’t get rid of them.

2. Chinese food condiments and plastic implements. I get these when I order Chinese food for delivery to my home, which appears to have been hundreds of times. My favorite Chinese restaurant provides sealed plastic bags with packets of duck sauce, soy sauce and Chinese mustard, along with a small spoon and fork and a tiny folded paper napkin. I have a large growing collection of these packets.  Since I eat this food at home, I use my own implements and napkins, especially since the napkins provided are too small for use by anything larger than a small rodent. But it seems a shame to throw any of this out. And one time a few years ago while making a dish that required soy sauce, I used at least 25 of my saved soy sauce packets. And I may want to go on a picnic where the plastic ware will be useful. So I guess I can’t get rid of these things either.

3. Single earrings.  I have quite a few of those, but I remain hopeful that one day the lost one will appear. Many years ago wearing single earrings was in fashion. Also, why do I feel my earrings have to match? I have a similar collection of single socks, not likely ever to be in style as singletons, but maybe one day I will want to make some hand puppets. So I better hold on to those socks too.

4. Keys. I have several keys, even groups of keys, with no notion of the location of their locks.  Some may be from my former house in New Jersey (I moved 12 years ago), or a friend’s apartment, an old storage locker, or some other place. Some may have even been left in prior homes I lived in and I kept them just in case I ever needed them, and brought them with me each time I moved. And who knows – one day I may encounter a lock that one of those keys will fit, and will be happy that I had kept the key all along.

5. Greeting cards. My husband and I contribute to many charities, and many of them provide free greeting cards. Why? I suppose they expect that upon receipt of their cards, additional donations will be sent. Also, since the name of the charity is on the back of the card, they hope that when you send the card you may recruit new donors.  These cards include “Happy Birthday,” “Get well,” and “Thinking of you” with a particularly large blitz of cards received around Christmas time. My favorites are the all-purpose blank cards with nice picture of flowers. The growth in our card collection far exceeds my need for their use, even if I decided to send a card every day to everyone I know. Especially useless are the “Thinking of you” variety. If I am thinking of someone I will email or call them. However, I can use the envelopes that come with these cards to mail letters or pay bills, and maybe sometimes I will need one of the cards… so the collection grows.

Can’t live Without Them Because They Comfort Me Collections:

1.Postage Stamps. I know it’s out of fashion to pay bills by regular mail and to send cards for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, etc. with stamps on the envelope, but that’s how I do it (see section on “greeting cards” above). Having enough stamps in the house for any time I need to mail something is important to me and gives me a secure feeling. So I keep a couple of rolls of stamps in my desk. They don’t take much space and with the “forever” stamps, they will always be useful. I’m not sure when I might use the two and five-cent stamps I saved from years ago, but I keep them too just in case.

2.Toilet paper. I get nervous when we are down to only one roll in each of our two bathrooms. I like buying the 12-pack, putting half of the rolls in each bathroom, and then getting an extra pack- it can even be a 6-pack- for the linen closet. When the bathrooms are stocked and there are extras in the closet, I feel that one of my primary home-making responsibilities has been fulfilled and I am ready for any number of guests, in any medical condition.

3. Address labels. This is one of my husband’s collections, and is related to the greeting card collection, as many charities send sheets of peel-off address labels that you can use on letters or other mail. Despite my extensive snail mail letter writing/bill paying activities, the address label collection has continued to grow. We could probably paper all the rooms in my apartment with the labels and still have enough for anything we will ever want to mail. But it’s comforting to know we will never need to write out our home address. Perhaps one day we will move so that we can throw out this collection.

4. Batteries. We have a large collection of batteries of various sizes and shapes; D, A, 9V, and others. And though we have purchased batteries for our flashlights, remote controls, night lights, and other uses, when a need arises, we look through our big bag of batteries but never seem to find the right size or the right number of batteries. But we can’t throw them out, even though I noticed that some have expiration dates over a decade ago.  You never know when they might be needed and they probably still work.

In conclusion, after reviewing these collections, most of which I can’t part with or even trim down, one thing is clear. My new collections will need to find their place within the comfort of the old ones, which will be around for a while.