Spilling Secrets: An Old Woman’s Diaries

 

Three times in the past I’ve written posts about and have tried to purge over 45 years worth of diaries out of my life. I was twelve when I wrote in my first diary: “Today we had a spelling test and I funked it.” It was a black faux leather, five year diary and after that I had a one year, green book that I filled with movie playbills and boy crushes. Then I discarded the idea of using official diaries and I switched to using red and black books with blank pages from the office supply store. I was able to buy that same style from the mid ‘50s through to the new century. With some of the earlier, boy crazy volumes it took two books to get through a year. Later volumes compressed 3-4 years in each book. By the time I’d discovered blogging as my new form of diary keeping my last red and black book had only yearly entries for entire decade of the 2000s.

The fact that I’m back here writing about my old diaries again is all the proof you need that my three attempts to finally let go of them were dismal failures. I kept getting sentimental over reading through them and I'd decide the purging could wait until another day that never came. Until this week. Well sort of---I compromised with myself. Half are gone, half will get moved with me. I kept the ‘50s through 1960 when I was still an innocent kid. A boy crazy kid to the core if you can believe the ramblings of a teenage virgin who thought she was destine to never find true love. (Didn't give up my V-Card until I was twenty-five, in case anyone is asking,) Not much was on those pages that could hurt anyone’s feelings should family read them after I’m gone, not much of anything is in them which begs the question: Why can’t I let them go? I’m thinking maybe it’s because they show how much I’ve grown, expanded my mind, my writing abilities and interests in life? As a side note, do you find it as curious as I do that I’m back to looking for true love again, only this time I'm looking in the pages of romance books? The more things change the more they stay the same.

I also shredded the travel journal I blogged about not long ago, but I kept one later diary volume, 1970, the year I met my husband. Trust me, it was not filled with hearts and flowers and puppy dog tales. We had a rocky beginning to our relationship. I was more interested in his friend---we all met at the same time---who I was also dating and it was 4-5 months before Don and I got around to being exclusive. I think I kept that volume to remind myself of how much our relationship grew over the decades to come. We'd both been in serious relationships before we met that, for me, ended badly and took me to dark places. Don was fighting demons of his own. Eventually it won't be hard to shred that diary like I managed to do with the rest of the ‘60s through the ‘90s. Just not this year. I still have some lessons to learn from that tumultuous year.

One of the reasons people keep old diaries is an attempt to understand our pasts and how they influence our present. And I'm proud of myself for purging the diaries documenting the year I fell head over heels in love with the guy I dated before Don and the dark year after we broke up when the phrase "one-night stands" could have applied a few too many times. I thought he was my forever guy and for a while he thought the same way about me and it broke my heart into million pieces when it was over. Since my last attempt to purge that era of diaries I did a deep dive into a collection of letters written back and forth to Vietnam and I found the understanding I needed, of how much the Vietnam War played a heavy hand in our break up. We met through those letters and he serviced five tours of duty over there before we started dating. Looking back with an old woman's wisdom I finally realized the breakup was not about me...or him. It never was, and just like that I made peace with the hurt and found the healing I needed. At last, it was easier than I thought it would be to tear those two books apart and put the pages through the shredder.

In 1999 I had gone back to using a one year diary that documented my last year out of five of share-caring my dad and his dementia and trying to balance the time spent with him, working and my life with Don. It was not a pretty picture. I was always sleep deprived and stressed out and that diary was filled with tensions and arguments with my brother. And imagined or not, I felt like my share-caring---being away from home three days and two nights a week to be with my dad---was pulling Don and I apart emotionally. He was still there for me when ever I needed his help with Dad or whatever but our time for fun and recreation fell by the weigh-side and was being filled in his life by a neighbor couple. I was jealous. 

This week as I read through that 1999 book it became the first one to hit the shredder. I didn’t want my nieces to one day find it and see their father and me in a bad light. And I’ve never been that person who talked negatively about a significant-other or spouse. That’s what diaries are for and I didn't want my nieces to see me doing The Snitty Dance just because Don essentially had time to laugh and play with the neighbors when I didn't. Those neighbors, by the way, turned out to be good time Charlies because after Don's massive stroke they rarely came to visit and that really hurt Don.

Crazy to say this but those five years of share-caring my dad are what I'm most proud of. I met a hard challenge and helped give Dad the best life a guy with lung cancer and dementia could have and yet you'd never know that, reading that one year diary. Some of my best memories of my dad happened that year but I never wrote a word about them in real time. The diary had to go so the a glossy "re-write" of my personal history doesn't get contradicted by a book filled with the writings of a woman who was clearly holding on by her fingernails to her world spinning out of control. To my nieces my caregiver crown will still be a shiny example for the same challenge they've recently taken on for their dad.

Marie Kondi in one of her books on downsizing said no one should own more than 30 books and we’re to keep them in a box in a closet. Ideally she thinks we should just tear out the pages we like in a book and throw out the rest. (Clearly she's not a reader.) I really dislike that woman but I actually followed her advice during my diary purging project. Mostly I kept some of the preambles that I wrote each year. God, some of them are so pretentious that they make me laugh. They would have been great preambles if I’d turned out to be famous. Just goes to show that teenagers and twenty-somethings don’t know squat. But of all the pages I want to save---and there were less than a dozen---the diary entry I love the most after a reading marathon that covered so many years of my life is still my “I took a spelling test today and I funked it” written in 1955. If I every purge that diary I will frame that page and hang it near my computer because I am still a notoriously bad speller. ©

Note: Sorry this post is long. I couldn't decide what 300 words to cut to keep within my self-imposed 1,000 word quota. It was also somewhat liberating to spill all my secrets at once and let the chips fall where they may.

The diary box before the purge. The notebooks on the right are filled with bad poetry I wrote .

It’s not the KonMari Method of Downsizing

I’ve done my share of poking fun of the KonMari Method of downsizing but I’m trying to be kinder and gentler when I utter my dislike of things that bug the heck out of me. And that’s all I’m going to say about the petite lady who earned herself eight million dollars teaching people how to ask their possessions if they give them joy and trashing what doesn’t give them an affirmative answer.

My downsizing method is different. I started out by making one dimensional, scale model furniture to move around on a floor plan of the unit where I plan to live one day until I knew what pieces I’ll be able to keep and what I’ll have to say goodbye to. I’m living in a 1,600 square foot house with a full basement and three stall garage and will end up with 1,000 square feet and an underground parking space so a lot has to go. Two pieces I knew right off the batter’s mound wouldn't make the cut: a Hoosier cabinet (photo to the left) and a large four-sided glass showcase, and I took my first steps toward letting them go. For anyone who doesn’t know what a Hoosier cabinet is they were a work center for the kitchens of the 1920s, before built-in cabinets were the mainstay of housing. They all have a pull-out porcelain work surface, a built-in flour bin and sifter, a metal bread box and storage for cookware and dinnerware. They came with glass canister sets and I still have most of the original pieces. 

The Hoosier cabinet has been in my husband’s family since his parents got married. It was the very first piece of furniture they bought and 15-16 years ago we spent $700 to have the Hoosier restored to its original glory. (It had been stored in a barn and then a basement for a lot of decades.) After my husband died I wanted it to stay in his family and I offered it for free to his nephew and niece-in-law who like antiques. They were so excited they started looking online to complete the canister set. But the day they were supposed to pick it up, she called and said they'd changed their minds...blah, blah, blah. She ended her explanation by saying, “I can call around to see if I can find someone to take it” and I had a terrible time not retorting, “If I’m going to give away something I could sell for $400-500, I’ll be the one to decide who to give it to!” 

This week I unloaded the Hoosier---again---so Tim, the-son-I-wish-I-had, could help me move it out to the garage. In the spring I'll list it for sale. As for the pressed glassware I kept inside? Some will go the auction house, some went to Goodwill and what I’m keeping ended up inside an antique ice box since that piece will move with me. (Photo below.) I might downsize those dishes even more when I go through the kitchen cupboards. For now, I’m slowly working my way towards staging the house so the space that opened up where the Hoosier sat now has two bookcases sitting in its place, housing the books that made the cut when I did the Great Library Purging Project. My end game goal is to get one wall of my library exposed….no bookcases, no glass sided showcase and the other wall will be full of four empty bookcases that the realtor says can be left for staging the room as an office. Before that happens, though, I’m turning the library into e-Bay Center for when I start selling again in the spring. All the small stuff I’m selling is being moved to the library and I set up my laptop and postal scale in there. 

Three-fourths of the collectibles in the glass showcase I’ll be e-Baying and other fourth took up a half day of decision making and moving it out. It was sentimental stuff mostly from my childhood but I can’t keep all the sentimental stuff I’d like to. My criteria is I can only keep what I can fit in a small antique dentist tools cabinet that I freed up last summer after e-Baying my husband’s collection of Old West stuff…handcuffs, padlocks, spurs and cast iron Indian and buffalo banks, etc. I suspect before I actually move, the stuff inside my dental cabinet will get tweaked a few times before I’m through downsizing. (Photo below.)

But for now I’m having a lot of fun walking past the dental cabinet every day and seeing where my herd of ivory elephants are going. Half the elephants only have three legs and vibrations are making them ‘dance’ around. In Chinese culture a string of seven elephants represents eternity but I only have six and they are having trouble staying in line so what do you suppose that symbolizes? They are turn-of-the-century and I couldn’t sell them even if they were whole and I wanted to because it’s illegal to sell ivory objects no matter how old they are. And who would want a donated herd of three legged elephants? They got that way having survived a tornado that took the roof and three walls of my husband’s family farmhouse and dumped them in a field. The curio cabinet where the elephants lived at the time was left behind but tipped over, much of its contents smashed. Every object in my dental cabinet has a story and, yes, Marie Kondo, the elephants tell a story that gives me great joy. It's a story of human survival, of loss and rebuilding and treasuring even the imperfect story queues. ©

What pressed glass I kept from the unloaded Hoosier, is in the ice box above.

This is my marble collection which I'm keeping. I didn't downsize it but I did empty a large tray of marbles and added them to a couple of new-to-me fruit jars. I won't have room for the table where I displayed the tray of marbles. I'm still looking for two more fruit jars so I can lighten up these jars and get rid of the two glass balls to the right.

These two bookcases replaced the Hoosier. (Another holds all my art books, CDs, DVDs etc. is in a different room.) One more bookcase will go in my future laundry, and when I move I'll sell the others.

This is the glass showcase after I took out what I'm keeping and put it in the dental cabinet below---lots left to e-Bay. The case itself will get sold next fall, probably to a vendor in an antique mall where Tim knows many of the tenants.

The pie carrier on top of my dental cabinet has a story to tell on another day.

This is a close up of my ivory elephant family with the larger cast iron elephant bank. My sundial watch is in front and my childhood blocks are to the left. My husband and I both had sundial watches that we wore on play dates to Lake Michigan. The doll is wearing a coat made out of the suit my mom got married in. The first bathing suit I had as a toddler is also in this cabinet of stories as well as a Lone Ranger snow globe my dad bought for me. 

Marie Kondo and my Bedroom Project

Let me say right off the bat that I’m about to trash Marie Kondo’s methods of “tidying up.’ If you don’t know who she is, she’s got a new TV show on Netflix that is based on her run-away best-selling books and just about every talk show has either been talking about or interviewing her. As a blogger friend said, “You either love her or hate her.” For me, ‘hate’ is a strong word that I reserve for presidents who commit High Crimes and Misdemeanors but a guest on The View was quick to label Marie “his mortal enemy.” If you’re one of her fans stop reading if you can’t be open-minded about my reasons for not buying into her philosophy starting right out with her calling what she does “tidying up.” In one of her videos she said she’s had clients who filled up over a 100 trash bags. That’s not “tidying up” that’s deep cleaning or decluttering. Tidying up is putting the potholders in the drawer and making your bed because company is coming. Language matters. You wouldn’t call a leg amputation a pedicure and you’re not “tidying up” when you can put a 100 trash bags out to the curb on trash pickup day. Also, Marie never addresses the psychological reasons why possessions are security to people who ‘hoard’ to that extent.

To be fair to the girl, I decided to do some research to figure out why she evokes such a negative reaction in me. In addition to watching some of her YouTube videos I bought the Summary: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. It’s a 75 pages, $3.99 Kindle download and I read every page but it didn’t change my attitude nor make me want to click to buy the full book. I do like her method of folding socks and I’m am now using the official KonMari method of doing that task. I own a lot of socks. I have knee highs and no-show socks and everything in between---all black or gray. I even have old socks in my cleaning closet that are used to clean up dog vomit, after which I finally throw them out. I’ve tried to research how many socks are too many according to the Tidy Up Girl but I couldn’t find a number. She a minimalism so I’m guessing two pair in each style. I visualize her doing laundry nightly like someone living out of a suitcase.

One of the things that I bad-mouth about the KonMari method is Marie’s attitude towards books. She believes you should throw out books you haven’t read and books you’ve already read. Yup, if you’re reading a book that’s the only one in the house that’s safe from being labeled, “garbage” which is her favorite word to use for our stuff. She also says if you have a book you just can’t part with, tear out the pages you like and throw out the rest of the book. And if you can’t do the tear-out thing then, she says, put the books in a box and store them in your closet. Thirty should be enough to keep. I have an entire library room in the house with twenty-feet of floor-to-ceiling shelves full of books. I value books. I wouldn’t destroy a book but I might start calling my library a book closet. All I’d have to do is cover the glass-paneled door over so you can’t see into the room from the living room. I do plan to purge and donate enough books so I can move six running feet of books from my bedroom to my new ‘book closet.’

Which brings me to another, exciting project. It started with an exhaust pipe in the roof that was leaking and caused a stain on the master bath ceiling. I had the pipe cap replaced, then I marked the edges of the stain so I could be sure it didn’t grow. Enough time has passed that I decided I could repaint the ceiling but guess what. A few years ago when I thought I was going to buy a condo I threw out the paint I’d saved for touch ups. Now I have to paint the whole bathroom so I’m taking the opportunity to change color schemes in the master bath and connecting bedroom and to get a smaller bed. So off I went to shop quilts as my color palette starting point. Hours and hours of online shopping later I bought a quilt and shower curtain. I’m going from a grey, black and red palette to a girlie beachy/cottage theme.

My closet purging project, by the way, got done. Like Frank Sinatra, ‘I did it my way’ in five sessions---not the KonMari one giant session way. Her method of piling all the clothing from all over the house into the center of a room, then picking up each piece and asking yourself it if sparks joy might work for some people but if I did that I’d end up with three things to hang back up: two iconic outfits from the ‘70s and a 1950s Scandinavian sweater that my mom made that earned me a quarter page photo in the newspaper with the headline: Baby, It's Cold Outside! I get joy from many things, but clothing is not in the mix. I get joy from my metal Cracker Jack toys, from my handmade scenic and portrait buttons from the 1800s, from books, stones and seashells. I get joy from my whale oil lamps, woman's suffrage postcards and art prints. The list goes on and much of it serves no useful purpose in this century. 

I do respect the idea of creating a smaller footprint---the minimalist mindset. I’ve read a lot about other minimalists in recent years because they do fascinate me but none of them make me feel like a lion who'd like to stalk them for dinner like Ms Kondo does and I figured out why. By her soft-spoken, simplistic labeling of everything that you don’t use daily or doesn’t spark joy as “garbage that you can get rid of” she’s insulting my entire, life-long collector’s life style. Other minimalists use words like ‘recycle’ and ‘donate’ for things you may have tired of owning which I don’t believe appeared even once in Marie's summary book while the word ‘garbage’ appeared so often that I wanted to bounce my Kindle up against the wall. ©

Photos: My new quilt at the top and this is my new shower curtain.