Who Can Relate?

Ummm...I think this is me! 😉

Lost and Found: Pear Dish

 
When I was a child, my parents and I camped at the state fair every year. I remember the first time that I was allowed to explore the fairgrounds on my own with my second cousin. It was a big deal to be able to visit the Midway without my parents in tow! The two of us set out with a few dollars in our pockets to spend on rides and games. If memory serves me, we won a goldfish or two and giant tissue paper flowers that year. But the best game -- or at least the one where we found the most success -- was one in which we tossed coins onto tables of glass dishes, similar to this one. If your coin landed on a dish, it was yours.

On that hot afternoon when the Midway was nearly empty, my cousin and I tossed so many coins that we each filled a brown paper grocery sack to the brim with colorful plates, cups, bowls, and assorted glass dishes. We toted those heavy bags all the way back to the camper without breaking a single dish. Although we were thrilled with our winnings, I remember my mom was not quite as excited! After all, what was she to do with such an odd collection of glassware?

Of all the dishes I won that year, the one I liked the most was a pear-shaped milk glass dish with raised fruit on it. I didn't know to call it milk glass back then. I just loved the shape of the dish and its milky white color. 

 In time, my mom successfully divested herself of all of my fine glassware at garage sales. I  eventually forgot about my dishes, except for the pear dish. So when I found myself sorting through my parents' house preparing for the auction three years ago I kept an eye out for it, hoping Mom had packed it away in a box somewhere. But I never found it and concluded that it must have been sold or broken.

Recently I stopped by our neighborhood Goodwill on the hunt for some milk glass vases. On the top shelf, pushed way to the back, I spotted a small white dish and pulled it down. To my complete surprise, it was my pear dish, looking even more beautiful than ever! On the front of the dish were the embossed fruit images I remembered so clearly.

 

And on the back were textured flowers, a detail I'd forgotten. As soon as I held it in my hand, I knew it was mine.

Of course, this pear dish is probably not MY pear dish...but it MIGHT be. Either way, I was thrilled to find it again as it makes my memory complete.

It turns out that this vintage dish was made by Hazel Atlas, one of my favorite glass manufacturers. Funny that I loved it back in elementary school and still love it today. Milk glass has become one of my favorite kinds of glass.

So even though I paid a few cents to win the pear dish back on the Midway, I was only too happy to pay an additional 99 cents to bring it home once again. This time to keep! :)
jp

Stuff from My Childhood: Hankies

I grew up in a time when ladies always kept a hankie in their purse or tucked in the pocket of their apron. Even my dad, who worked a blue-collar job, carried cloth handkerchiefs. I can remember many a time when one of the grown-ups in my life pulled out a hankie to dry my tears or wipe my runny nose.

When my mom taught me to iron, the first item I worked with was my dad's white handkerchief. Each time the laundry was done, she would give me a big pile for practicing. After mastering the simple handkerchief, I graduated to pillow cases.

Hankies made lovely little gifts, and I can remember giving pretty seasonal hankies to my piano teacher each Christmas. I also received them from time to time, most often from my maternal grandma. Many of the hankies she chose for me depicted nursery rhymes. At one point I had amassed so many hankies that I considered it a collection. I never used my hankies, but I loved taking them out of the box, unfolding them to look at the colorful designs, then folding them carefully back up for safe-keeping.

 

 Hankies have always been special to me, so in working through my estate situations over the past few years, I collected and saved all the hankies I found. Over time I've sorted through them and selected my favorites to keep, letting go of the rest to move on to new homes with others who appreciate their simple charm.

Some hankies evoke strong memories of my grandmas, both of whom carried hankies all of their lives. My maternal grandma loved flowers, especially purple ones, and the soft feel of her purple hankies can take me back to my childhood. Although thin and worn, these are the kinds of hankies I will keep.

My paternal grandma had very different taste in hankies. The poinsettia hankie reminds me of the many Christmas Eves my cousins and I spent at my grandparents' house, wearing our new pajamas and watching out the window for Santa's sleigh to pass overhead.

This grandma was exceedingly frugal, and some of her hankies are nearly threadbare. Of course, I'll keep this hankie, too.

For me, hankies are a tangible connection to my childhood. Although they're small, they trigger powerful memories and connect me to the people I've loved.

jp

Those 70's Clothes & More

Those of you still reading my blog (if anyone is still out there!) might wonder if I'm still blogging! I really do have the best of intentions to post more regularly, but for various reasons I just haven't had it in me lately. In the past couple of weeks I have been especially distracted by something weird going on with my eye which distorts my vision and makes it not so easy to look at a computer screen. (No worries...it will eventually resolve on its own, but in the meantime I am developing a lot of empathy for those with permanent vision loss.)

I am STILL working my way through the tubs in my basement. I am now focusing on some of the more difficult items, notably my mom's wedding dress and the tubs full of my own clothes from when I was a baby and in junior high/high school. I can understand why my mom kept some of the baby clothes but I do not know why she kept all of these 70's clothes! Mom always wanted to be ready for costume parties and theater productions so I'm guessing it had something to do with that.

I do remember many of these shirts and have a few pictures of me wearing them. If you grew up in the 70's, you probably remember the Gunne Sax brand. The long-sleeved cream shirt and the blue smock top were both made by this company, as were several of my prom dresses. We loved the Victorian look back then! :)

So I took all of my shirts out of the tubs and after washing them, I decided I didn't need to keep any of them. Last week I re-set my case at the antiques mall with a rod, and I hung them all up (priced very cheaply!) to sell. 70's Halloween costume, anyone???

I'm also in the process of going through all of my baby and toddler clothes. I will probably keep a couple of the dresses, but there are many other outfits that need to go! They are all in great shape, many like new after being washed.

There are soooooo many rompers! Why did my mom dress me like a mechanic? Must have been the style back then!

So progress continues, albeit slow, and I have hope that I'll actually make it through all of those tubs before the snow flies. Thanks for bearing with me and stopping by!

Selling (Some Weird) Stuff

 I wish there were more hours in the day. I wish I weren't such a sappy, sentimental basket case. If those two things were true, I would much more successful clearing out the boxes of stuff around here. Instead, I continue to plod along at a snail's pace, selling a few small items here and there on eBay and at the antique mall.

It's strange what actually sells. Would you believe old perm rods? Before I tossed them, I decided to check on eBay and learned that old salon/hair care items are quite popular right now. I also sold some of my barettes from the 1970's -- since my daughter forbids me to wear them. :)

I also sold a couple of sets of brand new Valentines from the early 1970's. They were so darn cute that I kept one set for myself.

 

Speaking of Valentines, as I've been sorting through boxes, I've been finding numerous Valentines from the 1920's-1950's. It seems that my mom and my grandma kept almost all the Valentines they received. I thought long and hard about it, then saved my favorites and sold the rest. There are over 140 used Valentines in this pile alone! I hope this does not cause my crafty friends to hyperventilate. Trust me -- I kept plenty. :)

 My mom loved the Lone Ranger as a child and had saved several western jewelry pieces. I thought about keeping them but in the end, these items do not make me think of my mom, since she owned them as a child. I wanted to find a good home for them where they would be appreciated.

This is a tie slide.

This is a ring with a tiny gun on top.

 This is a Lone Ranger bullet with a tiny compass inside. It's pretty cute, and I almost kept it. Still, I have no regrets about this stuff. I want to keep the things that I associate with my mom.

I found some movie star newspaper clippings and photos from the 1930's. Obviously my mom had ordered the photos by mail. Because western items seem to be collectible right now, I put them out on eBay and sure enough, they sold. Glad they're going to a new home.

I have a box of jewelry from my mom's childhood. I went through it with her sister to understand the significance of each piece so I could decide which ones to keep. I've now sold several pins and bracelets on eBay. I'm not making much money on any of this, mind you! I'm just trying to find good homes for things that were important to my mom or me.

 My mom saved lots of my baby clothes and several pairs of my shoes. Good grief. I do not need my baby shoes, although I may keep a pair or two. These recently sold on eBay.

My mom had a couple of "Woodettes" sets in the 1940's. These wooden figurines were designed to be assembled and painted by a child. I am very happy to have shipped this set off to a new owner just today!

 Not everything has been easy to sell. I've let go of several of my childhood dolls so far (the ones that didn't have as much emotional pull) and now I'm getting into the dolls that were more important to me. Last week, these two Storykins dolls (Goldilocks and Cinderella) went to a new home. Oh, how I used to love that pumpkin coach! To help me feel better about this, I decided to keep pictures of all of my childhood toys to put in a scrapbook one day. 

  I've sold my Dawn Doll car, bedroom set, and now this telephone stand/chaise lounge. I'm working my way up to the Dawn Dolls themselves, which will be very hard for me to sell. I loved them and, as hard as it will be for me, I must find a good new home for them. So I need to take a deep breath and do it while there is a strong market for them.

Yep, I'll do that. Soon...very soon! :(

Collecting: Don't Do It

Spouse and I have been talking lately about all the stuff I've been sorting through in our basement. This is a frequent topic of conversation, since it occupies many of my waking hours and nearly all of my thoughts these days. A couple of days ago, the subject of collections came up, prompted by the boxes of stamps that littered our kitchen table.

Before the estate sale, I brought home my stamp collection book plus all of the loose stamps and other paraphernalia I had amassed as a child. Truthfully, I really should have brought it all to our house many years ago, but it took up quite a bit of space so I just left it in my parents' basement.

As part of my mission to get rid of stuff, I set about finding a new home for my stamp collection. I did a bit of online research to see if stamp collections have any value. 

They don't. 

Unless you've got a rare stamp with documentation, stamps have plummeted in value. Not very many people collect stamps these days and because there is little interest, stamp collections can be hard to sell. It certainly would not be worth putting it on eBay, so I took the collection to a local dealer to see what he would offer.

 He gave me $20 and a bag of broccoli from his garden. Seriously.

As you can see in this sideways photo (sorry about that!), I had filled a few pages of my album with stamps. I always thought some of these old stamps had value. Maybe they did at one point, but not today.

 

Most pages looked like this, more sparsely filled. Still, I hoped that the stamps from foreign countries might hold some value. Nope.

 

 I also took in several batches of loose stamps, including many uncancelled foreign stamps in glassine envelopes which I hoped would be worth something. Nope. Even my plate block sheets of vintage stamps are apparently better used as postage. Loose stamps like the ones in the box are now sold BY THE POUND, which tells you how little they are worth.

I'll admit it: Hearing that my collection had little value was a bit hard to swallow. But I knew from my online research that it was true. The dealer's offer was fair -- and probably generous.

So back to the subject of collections. As a child, I started very few collections on my own out of interest in a particular topic. Instead, my family decided that I should collect ITEM X and started the collection for me. This always put me in a difficult spot as I wanted to be gracious to my family, but it's hard to keep up with a collection if it's not really something that intrigues you. Over time, I did develop an interest in stamp collecting but not enough to sustain it long-term.

Once people learned I had a stamp collection, everyone started saving stamps for me. In going through my collection, I found BOXES and BOXES of cancelled stamps from people in our town. The same thing happened to me when I decided to collect paper napkins (don't ask...) back in junior high. EVERYONE GAVE ME THEIR NAPKINS. I really didn't want napkins from events I hadn't attended but I didn't want to offend anyone, so I accepted the boxes of napkins graciously.

Guess what I'm sorting through now.

Spouse thinks no one should collect anything...ever. Although I think that's a bit harsh, I'm inclined to agree. Collections found in estate situations are hard to handle, simply because you have SO MANY of one type of item. My mom collected several types of figurines, and none of them were worth anything at our sale.

 Remember Beanie Babies? They were worth a lot of money for a few years, but the bottom fell out of the market and now (with a few exceptions), you almost have to pay people to buy them. It seems that only a few types of collectibles increase in value over the years. As an example, my dad collected toy John Deere tractors which HAVE held their value and sold well at the auction.

So I have mixed emotions about collections. I certainly enjoyed some of my collections over the years, but I know from experience that they can be troublesome in the end. Having dealt with several types of collections now, I guess my advice is this: Don't start a collection. If there's something you like or enjoy, limit yourself to one or two of that item. You'll enjoy a single Delft plate more than 200 pieces which are hard to store and difficult to display.

If you have already have a collection, be aware of the current value and pare it down while there is still a market for it. If there is no monetary value, consider giving special pieces to family members who share an interest. Do your best not to leave 300 porcelain bears (or 50 ceramic angels, or...) for someone to handle after you're gone.  

jp

Letting Go of the Sentimental Stuff

During the month of June, I'm trying to focus on clearing out a lot of the stuff that still sits in the basement from my estate sale. I am making some good progress, as you can now see the carpet and walk around down there. But trust me, I have miles to go. 

This is what it looked like after the sale:

 This is what it looks like now, 1.5 years later. Not nearly as much progress as I would like, but you can definitely see improvement. I had planned to work on this project last summer but instead needed to move my grandma to the nursing home, then clear out and sell her house. But the main reason this has taken so long is that these boxes contain sentimental items, things I could not face as I prepared for the estate sale or in the months immediately after. I could not even look in the boxes, let alone make decisions about what to do with the contents. But I'm tackling it now, and I won't stop until I'm done.

 Here are some observations on sorting through all of this sentimental stuff:

* Time really DOES help you decide what to do with sentimental items. If you're suffering from a loss, don't make decisions while you're still in the throes of grief. Let time pass and your perspective on some of those sentimental items may change. Wait until your head is clearer to make decisions.

* Allow yourself to keep the most precious items. My goal is to sort through and decide what to keep. I can't keep everything, but I won't get rid of everything either. I will keep the things that mean the most to me and figure out what to do with the rest -- donate, sell, or recycle. 

* Keep the things that bring you joy. There are lots of things in the boxes that trigger memories, but some of those memories are sad or painful. I have elected not to keep those things. Here's an example: After sorting through them and keeping a few, I got rid of most of the cards that were sent to my dad after my mom died. My mom was full of life. That's how I choose to remember her.

* Allow plenty of time to process through sentimental items. I've found that as the months have passed, it does get EASIER to face some of the boxes, but it's still far from EASY. I found myself in tears again last week trying to figure out what to do with a Ziploc bag of my mom's curlers which still carried the scent of her hairspray. It may sound silly, but that bag of curlers just about did me in that day. I finally decided to keep one of each size and let the rest go.

* Change your scenery. It helps me to drag the boxes out of the basement and put them in a sunny spot for sorting. Being down in the basement is bleak, no matter how brave I'm feeling.

* It may take several "passes" through a box to process it. As much as I would like to only go through a box of stuff once, that just hasn't worked for me. Some of the mementos are too painful to handle in one sitting. Often I'll go through a box and make decisions about the "easy stuff" first, then leave the rest for another time.

* Sort like items together. When I gathered up the contents of my parents' house, lots of papers got mixed together -- letters my dad sent to my mom while in the service, newspaper clippings, a box of notes from my own baby shower many years ago, photos, financial records, etc. All of these things were too difficult for me to process as I prepared for the estate sale, so I brought them all home to sort. The first step is to group all like items together. Just doing that helps a lot. It's much easier to tackle one box of financial records than multiple boxes of jumbled memories.

* Make a life binder. Or make several. I have now set up life binders for my mom, my dad, and me. When I find a significant document (birth certificate, diploma, report card, etc.) I put it in the life binder. It's almost like making a scrapbook as I go along. I can't emphasize how helpful this has been as I sort through boxes of documents.

* Take photos, then let it (or at least some of it) go. This has been my saving grace. I have sorted through BOXES of my own childhood artwork -- yes, my mom kept it ALL -- and I finally had to let go of some of it. My first pass through the artwork was to recycle all the bulky, over-sized pieces that were difficult to store. I took pictures of every single piece before placing it in the recycle bin.

This is a really good thing to do, even for pieces you decide to keep. Over time, construction paper becomes very fragile and breaks down. But a digital copy will last much longer.

And now I can make fun collages using my old artwork. I'll enjoy it much more now that I have it in a digital format, and it will be easy to add to my future scrapbook.

 Do I really need all of these spin art pictures from the Iowa State Fair? Definitely not. The frames make them quite bulky to store. I picked a few of my favorites to keep and let the rest go -- after I took a group picture.

I sorted through boxes of my dad's memorabilia and took pictures of much of it before letting it go. Ribbons like this are much easier to add to a scrapbook in digital format. Just by doing this, I was able to pare down his memorabilia considerably. The next time through those boxes, I'll be able to make some decisions on what to keep moving forward.

The month of June is half over, and I need to keep up the pace to get through the remaining boxes before July comes. I'd like to have the basement looking "normal" again. I'd like to be able to spend time in that space without feeling the emotional "weight" of all of this stuff. 

If you're in a similar situation, I hope you will find these thoughts helpful. Be patient and kind to yourself, and you'll get through this very difficult process.
jp

 

Selling More of My Childhood

Over the past year, I've been slowly (very slowly) selling a few items on ebay and at a local antique store. Progress has been painfully slow but I have moved a few items out of the house. I am hoping to pick up the pace this summer.

It has been particularly hard for me to part with items from my own childhood. I know this is about more than the objects themselves. They represent connections to the life I had with my parents growing up, so there's a part of me that likes to hold on to those physical reminders. Taking pictures helps me "process" the memories and let go. 

Reminder to self: I don't need to keep the object to keep the memory.

My Busy Bee pull toy...

 This Fisher Price radio...

 

This Playskool record player...

 

 

This bronzed baby shoe needs a new home. I had no trouble saying goodbye to it as I have no memory of it.

Someone must have made me these fancy booties.

I am releasing all of these treasures so they can now go to new homes and new adventures. 

Whew.