else's trash last week. What can I say? Sometimes he brings home really neat stuff. Like our dining room rug... but that's another story.Back to the buttons. They went out again in the trash the next day, but not before I'd pawed through them, marveling that many of them still had thread in the button holes.
I thought: here's a person who wears shirts and coats until they're unwearable, then cuts off the buttons and saves them. Talk about frugal. I wondered if maybe she (I think it's a she) cut up those shirts and coats and turned them into quilts.
My husband's mother saved buttons, too, though she did not quilt. After she died and we were holed up in her apartment for a few days, my daughters and I sorted through
the buttons she'd saved, arranging them by size and color. We brought them home -- not to reuse, but because we couldn't throw them away. Her sister-in-law worked in a handkerchief factory, so there was also a collection of about 50 embroidered handkerchiefs she'd been given over the years. We kept them all. Two years ago, they had pride of place in fond remembrance under mason jars filled with dahlias on the tables at my daughter's wedding.
My mother-in-law lived through the Great Depression. Hers was a generation of frugal savers. We're sentimental savers (my children's drawings and essays and the cartoon cards my husband makes for me on birthdays and holidays).
What kind of saver are you? Sentimental? Frugal? Or none of the above?
RHYS BOWEN: My grandmother's button box made me the writer I am today. They were among my first play-things--I gave them personalities, made them into schools and hospitals, interacted with them.
I am married to another hoarder. His mother used to wash out glass jars and use them to store things. John does likewise. Drives me crazy.
Every now and then I sneak into the garage and drop some into the recycling. My mother was the opposite--anything that wasn't useful right now got tossed out , including my favorite childhood toys. I'm in the middle. I keep things that were pretty and interesting and fun--the doll houses, favorite rag dolls, Peter Rabbit, my collection of elephants, but I'm getting better about letting go.
And I love my condo in Arizona that has minimum stuff and clutter in it.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: My grandmother saved buttons, too! And fabric, although it was for
mending, not quilting, sadly... Me, I'm not nearly as sentimental a saver as Rick--he has all kinds of family stuff, and the t-shirts he wore in high school, and--well, you get the picture.
But... I have my mother's last set of dishes in a box in my attic. Garden Botanica. They don't go in my house but I couldn't bring myself to give them away. And when she passed away in August, I kept all her beautiful Chinese and Japanese prints. I have nowhere to hang them, but can't bear, at least not yet, to give them away. (Some of them may actually be valuable but I wouldn't have the first idea how to sell them.) For the moment they're stacked under my guest room bed...
And I have to admit I have my grandmother's handkerchiefs in my dresser drawer...
LUCY BURDETTE: I do have boxes of letters and photos in my closet that are jammed in willy-nilly. I'm afraid if I were to disappear any time soon, no one would have the stamina to go through them. I'd love to organize them and get rid of the ones that aren't so meaningful, but that would mean reading each and every scrap. Who has the time? Every once in a while I threaten my John that I'm going to quit writing, then oil up my sewing machine and get out my glue gun and start doing crafts:). He doesn't believe me...
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: T-shirts. It is PITIFUL. This picture shows just some of the--no, I cannot do it. Even for you, I cannot reveal all the T-shirts I have.
- I have one from 1982, from the Atlanta FoxTheater, with the Rolling Stones tongue logo, that
says I MISSED THE STONES. (I'm supposed to throw that away? ) - I have one from the Zucchini Festival somewhere in Vermont that has the logo "No Cukes" that looks like the "no nukes" logo.
- From my time in 1972 (yes, 72) as a US Senate staffer, I have my shirt from Senator Kennedy's staff softball team that says BOSTON TED SOX. From 1993 (I think?)
- Paul Simon at Fenway Park.
- And sometime in the 90's the Police at Foxborough Stadium--I not only got the t-shirt, I got an Emmy for best feature story. Got to love it.
And pretty shopping bags. SO MANY OF THEM. Don't even ASK. And oh, tissue paper. Very reusable.
SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: I've been on my own since I was eighteen and responsible from moving my own stuff from apartment to apartment, so I've learned to be ruthless about not accumulating things. Even now that my husband and I have owned our own place for over a decade, I still think like that eighteen-year-old. I also like simplicity. And the kiddo has asthma, so the less stuff around, the better. (Do I sound heartless? I'm not, really, I swear. I love my people and pets! Just not stuff. Would have made a good Amish person or Buddhist monk.)
HALLIE: Do you collect? Save? And what can't you bear to throw away?
