06-22-00
I feel the need to simplify. Purge purge purge. It's like a house full of knick knacks and tchotchkes, little doilies and porcelain figurines everywhere. You can't sit down for all the decorator pillows clogging up the furniture. So many books on the shelves that you can't read. Little plastic toys from children's meals. Baskets of odds and ends. Plastic shoeboxes overfilled with even more things. Drawers of fragranced bar soaps and bathbeads unused. It's exactly like my house.
I am guilty of hoarding. I almost can't throw anything away. In the past year I've gotten better about keeping stashes of things; I got rid of a bunch of magazines that I had stockpiled, as well as shoes and clothing I hadn't worn in years. I used to have a terrible habit of saving shirts I'd spilled color or other stain-causing substances on because, 'I could wear them under sweaters or other shirts.' I now refuse to own clothing that I can't wear unless I wear it under or behind something else. A very small step, but a step indeed.
My problem is that I collect. I find something I like and suddenly have fifty thousand items directly related to said item. My bathroom is a faerie garden. I have faerie prints. A suncatcher faerie. Faerie statuettes and planters. A little frog prince shelf - more faerie tale than faerie, but it works nonetheless. My mother is hand-quilting me a faerie wall hanging. I have a tinkerbell on my computer, tinkerbell panties, and faeries all over my website. Hell, this website is named after a type of faerie, sort of. This isn't even the worst of the obsession. You should have seen it when I was really into the whole celestially-themed bedroom. Good gracious. I've pawned that one off onto my almost-nine-year-old sister, Alexandria, and even today I was thinking, "How cute would that celestial-print table runner look on the top of my bureau with all of the knick knacks on it!" before I remembered I don't have a bureau, and celestial's not my gig anymore.
And being a collector, people feel compelled to buy you things that fit the collection. Every holiday still yields something with a sun and/or moon and/or stars on it. Or, I started out with a couple of clothing and accessory items that were leopard print. Now, my winter coat is leopard-lined. My sunglass case and wallet and contact case and checks and checkbook are all leopard. I have a leopard-print scarf from Venice. A tiger-striped makeup bag. A elephant-print bag. A leopard-print carryall. A fuzzy leopard cigarette case that I use to hold Clean & Clear oil-blotting papers, which ROCK btw. I also have pants, several sets of undergarments, a shirt, a vest, and a slip that are all leopard. If I wanted to, I could buy shoes to match, and be leopard from head to toe. I don't want to, though; it's bad enough that my living room coordinates with my winter coat and my underpants.
It's enough to make your head spin.
