I say that of course, realizing that it is completely usual in it’s unusual-ness. My family is really not that strange and confusing, and just like everyone else’s family, it is filled with random members that collect hurricane shelters full of tinned yams and horde wood for y2k. It also has (just like everyone else) a quartet of organ-players, a banjo-soloist, a tarzan impersonator, a unicyclist, a zebra collector, a fraud specialist, and some Australians.

The thing about my family is that we really don’t have that many heirlooms. Some people have heirlooms up the yin-yang! Some people have hutches and desks and cabinetry built by their great-great-grandfer on the prairies of Oregon and hand-crocheted cat-ear cozies crafted crazily for a crotchety kitten who crankily crammed their cute meta-carpals into his craw.

It’s not like I’m jealous.

But my family is severely lacking in heirlooms. We haven’t been close to my paternal Grandparents in my lifetime. My maternal Grandmother began suffering from Altzheimer’s when I was about seven, so even my memories of her are tainted with memory loss, both of hers and my own.

I was twelve when she died, and not old enough to understand the desire to preserve trinkets and memories. I am left with photographs of her as my heirlooms. I love them! Seeing her as a young woman makes me feel like maybe I did know her, in a somewhat metaphorical way.

My Grandpa remarried a few years later, to an old friend of the family he reconnected with at my Grandmother’s death. I never identified with her, but now I wish I had tried harder to get to know her. She passed away this spring, and we have been slowly helping Grandpa weed through her possessions and send them off to her relations.

The entire time they were married, she had a collection hanging on her wall.

A collection of spoons.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. In fact, I thought the same thing when I first saw them. “Oh my gosh. SPOONS. How typically old-lady! What a silly thing to collect. I mean, SPOONS.”

If I knew how to triple-underscore and draw skulls and cross-bones around a word like I would in the notes I’d pass around school in the 7th grade in HTML, I would do so. That would fully-articulate the true disdain and hatred I felt whenever I saw them hanging on the dining-room wall.

Spoons.

I hated them. And honestly, as a 16 year old whose Grandpa re-married to a woman who had never had children of her own, no-less, I found that woman and her spoons to be-less-than-fantastic.

When she died earlier this spring, and Grandpa started sorting out through the last of her possessions, I knew the spoons would end up at a thriftstore.

When I visited his house, Grandpa would trot out many items of hers and offer them to me. I turned most of them down. He finally offered me her collector’s spoons.

They stared at me. Silver and tarnished, covered in plastic, embossed and emblazoned with words and names of places. I realized that she had travelled the world with her spoons, and had no one to look after them.

I hadn’t recieved anything from my grandmother, so it’s not like I had an issue with competing storage space. And the spoons… the spoons with their windmills and tarnished silver camels and necks covered in wildflowers… they were kinda cool.

In fact, oh hey! That one has a windmill that spins! And a cuckoo-clock that dangles! Oh wow, yeah I forgot she was a missionary in Bolivia… and she even went to Vatican City!

I suddenly was overwhelmed with this strange and fulfilling need to keep her heirlooms, as a substitute for my own. As a collector and a person who finds happiness in collecting things, the concept of leaving behind my favourite items without someone to value them too is pretty heartbreaking.

So I agreed to take the spoons, to everyone on the planet’s shock and awe.

And I love them.

The collection is rather large (to me!). I think I am now the proud owner of 30+ spoons from various places around the world. These are just my favourites to share right now.

I love seeing all the places she has been, and have even… started collecting a few of my own.

Here and there, you know, to commemorate big trips. Not anything… excessive.

They are spoons, after all.

Just spoons.

Only I’m not gonna. Y’all have your own life, and I have mine, and I’ve used the last four days very effectively, taking a pseudo internet-vaction. I spent some much-needed time in the real world, cleaning and organizing and taking things apart.

What exactly did I do?

Well, I bought a new mirror:

Criss-cross applesauce… Camera in your hands.

I waited 6 weeks for this mirror to go on clearance, and nabbed it for $10 + my 10% discount. Yeah, you’re totally jealous. I plan on painting it white, or red, or blue, depending on what takes my fancy when I go and buy paint.

The problem with these is that they reflect light DIRECTLY INTO YOUR EYES.

I also got these awesome mirrored nesting tables! On clearance, each for $10. I don’t have the largest one in the set yet, I’ll get it on Friday, as it wasn’t yet on sale. This is the first super-awesome deal I’ve scored at my store, and I am ridiculously proud of myself. Also, they look quite grand with my gold deer on them, no?

I cleaned out my closet… Because I discovered this:

Oh, sleeveless shirts!

This, my friends, was my favourite shirt in the 6th grade. Being a 22 year old of much better fashion sense (Rainbows are still awesome, but I don’t need everything I own to have rainbows on them anymore…) I decided it was time to bite the bullet and say goodbye to many, many articles of clothing that I haven’t worn for a number of years.

Goodbye~

I find getting rid of clothing you haven’t worn in a few months (…or a few years!) to be very cathartic. I’m pretty good at saying goodbye to clothes though. If I haven’t worn it since my last cleanup, it’s out, and no ifs, ands or buts. Giving clothing to goodwill makes me feel a little better about it too! Someone could totally rock this, since I’m not. Especially considering I’m trying to only thrift clothing through the end of summer, freeing up some space in my closet feels pretty nice.

No more…!

The problem with cleaning out your closet is you find all sorts of interesting things. And by ‘interesting’, I mean maddenly irritating since within pulling my first few shirts off of their hangers I had a giant wire mess on my floor. I was tempted to leave it there, along with a little card affixed to my carpet,
“2009 Wire Project:
“Completely Irritating”
by Brittney’s closet“,
but my Mother just doesn’t have the appreciation for art that I do, so I dutifully cleaned them up. Luckily these are going to be put to good use… back at the dry cleaner’s, where they came from!

This is my updated and cleaned-off bookcase. Here’s an earlier photograph (from an earlier room reorganizaiton/clean) I put my crappy television and PS2 away for now, since I’m at a point in life where video games don’t hold as much appeal as they used to… but maybe now that I’ll have friends in town for the summer I’ll bring it back out! I’m just glad to free up some space in my room for more important things.

Like purses.

I am moving in with you.

Why am I moving in with you? Let me tell you.

First of all, your house? Is amazing.
It is at both times horrendously ugly, and notoriously beautiful. You’ve incorporated non-traditional art and design to the facade, which probably means that you’ve incorporated non-traditional art and design on the inside as well.

Which means I need to live in it.

Don’t worry! I’ll be a proper roommate! I don’t have a car to park on your intentsely narrow street (yet) and I don’t listen to loud music (only on Thursdays) and I don’t even take up that much space (except… well, my closet is kind of big.) and I promise to always do my best to make sure that my outfit matches your house! What more could you want?