The other last piece of furniture was one of Ikea's brand-new Billy bookcases, with birch veneer panel doors, to be used in the dining room to hold the nice china and other dining room objects that don't fit in the oak curio cabinet that was my parents' last gift to me, and which has stood in a sister's house during the entire time I was living in Spain. It's odd that this cabinet was among the last things we moved into our apartment. I had expected that it would be the first, simply because we had it, and the dining room table and chairs, and we had to go out and buy everything else when setting up the household. Having spent so much time (and money) buying household furnishings in the last month, and realizing the order of purchasing them, has made me contemplate the value of things of various types in my life.I had overestimated the quantity of everyday things that I had stored. I had one set of dishes, one set of everyday cutlery, both of them, incidentally, the sets we had entered on our bridal registry wish list almost fifty years before. I had virtually no cooking utensils, neither pots and pans (having given away many heavy Wagner Ware pans, despite a sentimental loss, when I thought I would never use them in the U.S. again) nor vegetable peelers, mixing bowls, nor measuring cups and spoons, and the like. Not surprisingly, if you think about it, acquiring the paraphernalia for food preparation took precedence over moving the cabinet and unpacking the other "pretties," some also wedding gifts, that are only used on special occasions. I am pleased now to have reached the stage where I have the place and the time to do the final unpacking of the "pretties," and that will happen today, or this week, if, as I suspect, there are still a couple boxes of Royal Copenhagen china packed away at my sister's condo.
My contemplation of the value of things both practical and sentimental is also being fueled by my current reading of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. Frost's work was highlighted on the CBS Sunday Morning program a couple weeks ago, and that reminded me of the book, which was "Highly recommended" when it was reviewed by Choice magazine three years ago, not to mention the positive notice it had gotten in psychology literature, The New York Times, NPR, and hundreds of user reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads. My own clutter probably does not reach the hoarding stage, but considering the amount of paper and books that I managed to accumulate in our house in Spain in ten years, I would rather not invite a psychologist in to render a professional judgement.
Changing location and setting up a new household with only the few things that can be carried in an airplane or shipped at sufficient expense to make sure you don't ship unimportant items, plus the items that have been stored in boxes in a closet for the past decade, offers a brand new, clean slate. It also offers the opportunity to develop new habits, and I am trying hard to alter my daily actions so that I do not accumulate too many things and too much stuff to sort through, discard, or move when that time comes again. Even more importantly, I am trying to maintain a clear vision of the world around me in our modest but adequate home, because I think a clear and uncluttered visual space will help keep a clear and uncluttered mind, and I'm reaching a point in my life where I value that immensely.
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