Stop Tossing Out

 One of the silly things today is being pressured to throw stuff out. Out goes Gramma's china set, toss  Grampa's garden hoes, chuck Mom's recipe box, give away Dad's rocking chair. Keep? Nothing. Paint everything white and pick up a couple of weird looking black lamps and some leather bits to sit on uncomfortably. Careful with the new marble counter tops, they damage even though in Italy they last 300 years and counting. If it doesn't shine it's out. And do take off your shoes so you won't damage the plastic floor that will last for at least one hundred years. I jest of course. Why are we throwing away and adding to the pile of garbage that grows by the minute? The current trend is suspicious. We are told that when we throw everything out, our minds are healthier. Really? How come there is more mental illness than ever before. My thinking is that we are listening to the wrong people. When you throw out your family items, you are throwing out your family. If you have one. What are you going to say to your kids that  used to be when gramma or auntie guided you around their homes and told you about who owned what and when and the occasions about the piece? Where is their history going? To the garbage dumpster and the second hand shop, that's where. My advice is, keep what is family and don't hide it away so that  your place looks like a surgery instead of a home. "Clutter" is a scam. The matchy-matchy designer folk call it clutter but it's your life, the past one that made you. Realtors come in and bring along their "experts" who are brain washed into thinking that your "junk" is going to be shunned. They tell lies about buyers who want to "see" their own things and not your stuff. Uh uh. My friends all have condo units that look pretty much alike. Magazine decor. But one of them kept her wondrous collection of little bunny ware that is gorgeous and she displays it proudly. It is all I see what I enter her house. And I love it. She tells me where she acquired this piece and that. Another pal, has walls full of paintings and prints and art items of great value but also in her mind, each tells a story of acquisition. Yet another person is into art, and her place has a painting on the go in the one room spot with a lovely view. You trip over the cat's bowl because the cat is hiding in the closet. He doesn't like people. Her film work computers fill half another wall and the bed is in the centre of the room. What I see there, I envy. I see her and her life and her dreams and her talent when I walk in and I love her and it. To me, that is decor. When I walk into a home that looks like a hotel, I want to walk out again. That's what hotels do.  Nothing says anything. In my place, it's clean and neat but it tells stories in the greenery dripping from book shelf tops and reclaimed log tables and mats from exotic countries and travel mementos on the book shelves. The books are dressed in their own covers, not jacketed for decor. There are Native Canadian baskets and boxes and masks, a big painting of where I lived in the fifties, leans on the mantel. The dishes, while black and white are what I use every day as is what's on the bar, with its wines that are useable and enjoyed from time to time. The kitchen has my favorite little partners: air fryer, coffee maker, bread mixer, juicer  all black and steel, that rest on a marble counter made of Michelangelo marble that will last as long as the Pieta. It's me. Welcome it says.