I have too much stuff

I do. I have way too much stuff. You are probably saying to yourself, "No LisaPie, you don't have too much stuff". But you would be wrong. I have WAY too frigging much stuff. My friend Paula used to tell me that 3 or more of anything is a collection. Now if that is true, in my cookbooks alone I have like 1,000,000 collections! I have red ones, blue ones, short ones, tall ones, Mexican ones, Irish ones, cookbooks from Tea Rooms, you name a category of cookbooks and I betcha dollars to donuts I have more than one. Shelves and shelves of cookbooks abound in my house. I love them and cherish them. I read them like novels. My favorite cookbooks are old, antique, well-worn ones; the kind with spatters on the pages and notes in the margins and hand-written cards used as place holders so that it opens to the "best" recipe automatically.

I also have other collections, not just cookbooks. I have loads of other books, too. In addition to books I collect odd things like walruses (walri), really cool wooden spoons, copper tea pots, Nativities, interesting paintings and folkart, skeins and balls of yarn, crochet hooks and knitting needles, Monopoly games, jigsaw puzzles, and apparently dogs, cats and dust bunnies. Oh, I have a great collection of pewter and talavera crosses.

So, anyway, I have a lot of crap. And I was watching that show called Clean House where they come in and climb all over the excess crap you have spilling all over everything and bully you in to selling it for a nickel and then clean, paint and decorate your house and give you new furniture. While I was watching this I was wondering how I would react to someone telling me to give up my (fillintheblank) collection. I think I am at the point in my life where I can easily give up some of them. And I totally get the idea that if you don't treat your collections like treasures and display them properly (not mixed in with crap and covered with dust for instance) then they really may not mean that much to you. But boy, do they drag these people kicking and screaming and crying all the way to that point of clarity!

I have a hard and fast rule regarding most things: Anything new coming in the front door better have an equal going right out the back door. So if I am looking at say, a new pair of shoes then I am also thinking of a pair of shoes at home that I am willing to let go. This keeps me at the same level of accumulation. I will sometimes say that sweater is well worth getting rid of 3 old sweaters.

The trouble with collections is that they seem to multiply in the dark, much like plastic bags. You really need to stay vigilent or you can easily become overrun. Remember the other day when I talked about getting rid of 10 items a day? There are days when I will take 30 books down to Goodwill and you CAN'T EVEN TELL! That's how quickly clutter, junk, stuff and crap takes over. It immediately senses the void and fills it.

Maybe it is just the Spring Fever hitting me or it is a moment of clarity; but I need to decide which of my collections are worthy of places of honor and which need to go to a new collector and make them happy. I don't like the feeling of being overwhelmed by it all. I will keep mulling this over and see which items make the cut. Anyone else willing to be honest about this?

Take a look at your own life and house and see if there are areas where you feel like you can pick and choose which things really bring you joy and which are just weighing you down. I wish you luck with this!