Until last year I had a whole cupboard full of fabric, bits of things from the sewing I used to do—couldn’t bear to part with any of it because, oh I don’t know, maybe my passion for making culottes and drapery would re-ignite at any moment?? Not likely. Apart from the occasional pillow slip (and then only if I happen to find really great fabric) I leave the sewing to my newest best friend, a tailor named Pam.
So it was easy letting it all go—everything, that is, but one bolt of white damask I’d salvaged when cleaning out my mother’s house a few years ago. She’d bought it when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was still living at home; I recall chatter (arguments?) between her and my dad about the price, the quality, was she nuts? It was the only time I remember her buying something non-essential. I knew from the start this wasn’t just fabric.

She made a round tablecloth for her kitchen table and, years later, when I had a place of my own, a small square one for me. Despite its supposed exquisiteness, I didn’t like it much… but what could I do? It was The Damask, the crown jewels of our family. I thanked her and dragged it around to every place I lived.

For her part, that was all she did with it. The rest, metres and metres, was kept tucked away for—as it turned out—ever. Price tag still in place ($47.50). Too precious to use. An act of insanity that I realize I’ve perpetuated. At least once a year I consider pitching it but have never been able to get past its mythology. Or maybe it was how hard she fought to defend her right to buy it. Those were the days when women had to defend such things.

In any case, this year I’m on a serious de-cluttering mission, which includes not only chucking the stuff that’s easy but the stuff that’s hard. 

The Damask must go.

Because it’s not just a bolt of fabric, it’s a nefarious force attracting other remnants—it’s already attracted a small collection of fabric ends from a vest I had Pam make for Peter this Christmas (scraps I’ve kept in case he burns a hole in it with a cigarette even though he doesn’t smoke and even though he has a closet full of clothes that have never been burned by any object, lit or otherwise).

Okay. The vest remnants I’ll pitch.

As for the other—

Last year my mother had a stroke and now sleeps 24 hours a day in a nursing home, in and out of dementia, past giving a flying fig about The Damask or anything else. Perfect time to get rid of it—who would care?

Oddly… me, as it turns out.

True, I don’t want it in its lifelong form: neatly folded and yellowing, an irritant being shuffled from one place to the next. Nor do I need another tablecloth. But my perpetually sleeping mother—well, it suddenly occurs to me that she could do with a crisp new duvet.

In a damask cover of exceptional quality.

~

In 1992, I was given a little Georgia O’Keefe themed engagement calendar booklet thingy when such, now archaic, novelties were what every sensible person carried around with them. However else would you manage your days if not to write appointments, etc. in ink (a liquid, usually blue, stains something awful)…

As it happened I didn’t use mine to note appointments or meetings or social events—which is probably a story in itself—what I did instead was use it to note the titles of books I wanted to read.

Thing is I rarely consulted the list. I just kept adding to it and when I’d filled the pages I put the booklet in a drawer and began making lists on napkins and pizza flyers. The way you do. (Until someone gives you another little booklet—because it’s just the sort of thing you never walk into a dollar store and buy for yourself.) Recently, however—and it’s only been 19 years—someone did give me a new tiny notebook, which has freed me from pockets full of scribbles and shredded tissue and allows me space to begin making a new list I won’t get around to reading for a decade or two.

In any case, it’s time to say ta ta, Georgia. It’s been a slice and all that, but you’re really just part of the clutter now. (How a heart hardens over time, eh?) The contents of Georgia, however, are gold. But as long as she lives in a drawer, I won’t be aware of that gold.

So I’m listing Georgia’s contents, over at the other blog, a list I can share with friends, et al.  Technology makes this possible, god bless it, while ink—though I’m madly in love with it still—is such a private thing, and where books are concerned, I really think the more ‘sharing’ the better…

~

I have too much stuff. I want less. In fact I want what Alix Kates Shulman describes in Drinking the Rain—to find out “how little I need in order to have everything.”

And so as I get rid, I thought I’d commemorate some of the debris with a project—The Stuff Stories—where I try to understand why things that have no real meaning are difficult to part with—like a strange little boy doll in navy blue breeches that I bought during the 80’s. Can’t remember from where or even why, yet every time I try to pitch this unnamed thing that I have no special fondness for, I can’t. (The best I’ve done is getting him into a bag for the Sally Ann once. I dropped it off, drove away, then a kilometre or two later I turned around, went back, opened the bag, fetched him out and drove us back home.) Not sure what this means. But it’s very bloody weird, no?

Happily, I’m old enough to be more curious now about the why of hanging on to these things than to actually keep hanging on to it. Curious also about what there is to learn from the process of disentangling myself.

—And whether or not I’ll ever be able to say goodbye to breeches boy.

~

The Stuff Stories, a de-cluttering project of the storied kind.