ROSEMARY HARRIS: Happily neither of these pictures depicts my home - but...like a lot of people I occasionally wonder, why the heck do I have all this STUFF?
I know I have a lot less than my my friend's wife (the hoarder.)Or my other friend's wife (the shopaholic.)
But every closet, chest and trunk is filled to the max.
My house has no attic, no basement and very few closets (lots of glass...great for plants, not so great for stuff.)
So I'm requiresd to make periodic purges.
Right now I have a Bagster in my driveway. Have you seen them? They're very large, tarp-like bags which can hold a couple of tons of debris. They cost about 30 bucks and when they're filled you just call Waste Management and someone brings a truck and hauls it away. It's one of new favorite things. And for the past few weeks I've derived an enormous amount of pleasure filling it. Broken chairs that I've never gotten around to fixing. Falling apart willow fencing. The tag sale shutters I never used in the whimsical garden I never made. The broken window pane that I never got crafty with.
So explain to me how, with a clear conscience, I went to not one, but two estate sales yesterday. What if I really liked something? Where would it go??
The scary thing is that I own a bunch of stuff that looks very much like the items in the generic tag sale pic below. (I used to collect vintage radios.)
Mercifully I resisted the charms of the outdoor furniture sets, the stone planters, the vintage rattan sunroom furniture, and the ubiquitous floral prints which seem to be at every estate sale I've ever gone to.
That said, I came home with three very large resin planters, a black wrought iron coffee table, wicker footstool/table, two small ceramic planters and about 20 books - history, vintage Peter Rabbit and a copy of Anne of Green Gables, which I've never read and someone on JR rhapsodized about.And a Stangl vase ($8) that gets my vote for deal of the day.
Is this schizo behavior? Like ordering diet soda with an order of french fries?
(I'm counting on the JRs to say "no Ro! This is perfectly normal....")
