photo credit: usedtobelost

On August 1st I get the keys to my apartment. That gives me a couple of weeks to sort, purge, pack up the house. To add to the fun, my 18 year old daughter is moving into a townhouse near her college 90 minutes away, after spending last year in a furnished dorm, so she needs to get her things packed and moved too.

I’ve already sent dozens of boxes of books and household items as well as a dozen or so garbage bags filled with clothes, shoes, table & bed linens to a location donation centre yet I still seem to be over run with items that need to be dealt with.

I’m considering a yard sale but it’s giving me the shivers just thinking of it. My past experiences as a yard sale saleswoman haven’t been overly successful. Right now the idea of spending several hours (days?!?!) gathering items to sell, pricing them, dusting them, setting them up for display and then spending a day waiting around for people to come buy things and carry them off – *shudder*. I’ve just never made much money from it and all in all I find it a waste of time and energy.

Nothing against yard sales. I’ve got to many over the years and have found some great bargains. But as the seller it’s no picnic.

I’m considering doing an “online” yard sale of sorts instead. For the time it would take me to sort, dust, price and display items for a traditional yard sale, plus the time involved actually operating a yard sale all day or worse, all weekend – I could sort, price, photograph and write a short description of each item and post it for sale on Craigslist, Kijiji, or even local buy and sell groups.

On the other hand, a yard sale gets it over with on a specific date. Selling on Craigslist or Kijiji could drag this out for days or even weeks longer. With a yard sale I can say to myself – at 2pm if these items aren’t sold I will donate them to the local charity – and take them there immediately and be done with it.

Maybe I should just flip a coin?

Teapots

Originally uploaded by pigpogm

Part of the decision to move to a much smaller home – in my case moving from a house I’ve owned for 12 years to a rental apartment – is the understanding that a smaller place means less room for stuff.

You understand this on a logical level but perhaps not on an emotional level until it comes time to start deciding what moves with you and what must be disposed of by selling, donating, etc.

This is particularly hard if you have a collection. I know people with collections of crystal figurines, clocks, lighters, ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers, baseball caps…

I’m not a particularly sentimental sort and I’m not big into collections. Ok. I did collect books (several thousand hardcovers) for years. And perhaps I had a brief lapse and collected Beanie Babies a while back but generally… I’ve never been much of a collector.

However…
19 years ago on my honeymoon I had bought a lovely handmade pottery teapot from a local artisan. I’m not a tea drinker and I’m not sure what struck me about the teapot but I had to have it. I parted with $75 for this teapot and was happy to do so. It had pride of place on a shelf in my kitchen.

And then…
My mother got the notion that I wanted to collect teapots. First it was a Christmas gift of a teapot that looked like a hound dog wearing a Scottish style tam. Then on my birthday a teapot shaped like a rooster. Both of these got displayed along side the original art pottery piece in my kitchen.

And then…
My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law got the notion that i was collecting teapots. Over the next several years I was gifted with teapots for Christmas, birthday, Mother’s Day, anniversaries – any gift giving occasion and soon I was overrun with teapots.

And I still don’t like tea.

I began to comment how I didn’t like tea and I was a coffee drinker. No one got the hint. By now the shelves in the kitchen were bowing under the weight of all of these teapots and having run out of room to display them there they’d begun creeping onto the bookshelves and tables in my living room.

Being young and not wishing to appear ungrateful – after all it’s the thought that counts, right? – I continued to silently resent the teapots. By this point I had clowns, more dogs, cats, an elephant, several elaborate teapots that looked like an old fashioned sewing machine, an old potbelly stove, and a chess board. I swear I was having nightmares about teapots forcing me to drink tea after a while. At last count there were over 50 teapots in my teapot collection.

And I still don’t like tea.

I can’t even imagine if I had to deal with all of these pots today. Fortunately, a few years ago I finally worked up the courage to put a halt to the teapots and no longer have any – other than my original artsy teapot.

The problem with a collection is it often overruns your space and becomes a weight on you. When the last teapot was gone I felt a sense of lightness and freedom. I hadn’t realized how much the burden of all of these possessions – the dusting and the space they take up – had become until they were gone.

And I still don’t like tea. I’m addicted to coffee. But please, for the love of all that’s good and right in the world, don’t buy me any more coffee mugs. With my luck it’ll just turn into another collection.