all the pretty things I love

Get to work, I tell myself. But then there are things to be done here in this house. Housework is silly. Silly, like mowing grass -- silly, like shoveling snow. But I love housework. I love to pick up the things that have stories in them and dust them and move them to new locations and shine lights on them.

Right now, we're clearing clutter (again), and I've let go of some things I wouldn't have before. I know I have too many things in this small place -- and yet I don't need a big place just for things. I want room for people and room for the real work we do, not just for things.

So, we put things on e-bay. Things like old silverware (I hope a jewelry maker finds it), and a lava lamp (I hope an old hippy buys it) and a "sailor's clock" an hourglass with the watches of the night marked on it (whoever buys it is automatically cool).

We have a wooden butter churcn on there. Suddenly two people started bidding on it and the names were similar and both were new bidders with 0 ratings. We've been had before, so we suspected maybe someone was yanking our chain. So Honey wrote an e-mail and asked the bidder to identify him/herself.

The fellow who was bidding is a drama coach in school and he wants the churn for a prop in a school performance of Oklahoma. My butter churn is going to be in a play! I hope he wins. He doesn't know much about bidding and had a friend help him set up an account and then set up another because he'd set that one up wrong and he actually bid against himself.

I put a fireplace bellows on there -- ouch, that was difficult at first. I love things having to do with building a fire. I counted this as a magical item. I love Brighid, Goddess of fire (and poetry and smithcraft). I put an old lunch bucket on there. We put several looms on there, including the backpack loom I was weaving on that night in February when I should have been calling Joy (but how was I to know?).

I've got a homemade dress to put on there, a pyramid that increases the goodness of food that is put under it, a large cut glass punchbowl set, some white enamelware breadpans (maybe), some candlewick serving trays from the 40's that have an ashtray built in, some old 78 records, some sheet music, some baseball cards.

I've got an old bluegreen ice cream churn on there that is giving me problems. It's low right now, but already has two bids and I keep seeing this pretty thing in my old house I don't have. I keep seeing it where it should be. But I'm trying to let things go. I want to pull the sale -- but think this might not be a good thing to do -- might be cheating. But still...

My house keeps shifting as I take these things from their shelves and perches. I place other things in place of them and so there are spaces between and I see things clearer. I see things I won't part with. The things I keep are worth more to me. And the things that don't count at all will also go away -- they'll count to someone and I won't just keep them because they happen to be here. Some of the things I'll be keeping are not worth the money the things I'm letting go are worth. But they are still worth more to me.

My goal? I'd like to spend more time knitting, writing, spinning, playing music and finding story -- or visiting. And less time dusting things that I keep around because they're pretty.

Let them all go find other homes, and maybe some will even get to star in plays or live in an old hippy's bus.