Collections...or "Why I Will Eventually End Up on Hoarders"

I think you can probably see from my previous posts that my parents and I were not exactly minimalists when it came to decorating our houses.  Okay, that's the understatement of the year!  Around our houses, the rule was, "If you have more than two of anything, it is considered a 'collection'."  And, of course, collections must be added to!  (Yes, I know I just ended a sentence in a preposition, and my mother is rolling in her grave because of it!)

 

Throughout my life, I have collected:  dolls, rocks, seashells, Japanese lusterware, crockery bowls, hammered aluminum kitchenware, teddy bears, trinket boxes, native American art, crosses and cross pendants, David Winter houses, napkins, ballpoint pens, restaurant ware, miniature liquor bottles, sand, and booklets.  Because I have an almost pathological need to hang on to everything, I still collect everything except the dolls, rocks, napkins, and seashells!  Just recently, when the organizers came, I gathered the courage to divest myself of most of my dolls.  I spent my youth collecting them, but I don't really have any valuable ones.  I saved my favorites, and they're going in the room with the teddy bears.  Okay, I don't add any more David Winter houses because they don't make them anymore, and I can't find any little liquor bottles that I don't have, so I guess those are out too.

You may be asking yourself how I came to collect some of the things I do (or did)?  There's no rhyme or reason to it!  If it strikes my fancy, it's fair game.  But there's always a story there too.   For instance, I started collecting sand when I was younger and travelling a lot.  I would collect a little bit of sand from each beach that I visited.  I was even in Hawaii so long ago that visitors could still remove black sand from that famous beach.  I started the David Winter collection when I honeymooned in London.  They were new and all the rage back then.  I thought it would be a great souvenir from our trip and I liked how tiny and detailed these miniatures were.  The teddy bear collection started when I decided to go to Baylor University.  Since their mascot is a bear, teddy bears were the perfect collectible for a Baylor student.  The crockery bowls are some of my favorite things.  That collection started when I received my grandmother's bowl after her death in 1985.  I remember her making sourdough bread in it every week.  As I travelled with my family, I started noticing other bowls--different and so pretty.  Poof--a collection was born!

 

These are pictures of some of my "stuff."

 

 

Crockery bowls (one of my favorite collections)

 

The expensive blue crockery

 

Japanese lusterware

 

Between the two of them, my parents collected:  stringed instruments, wood carvings, thimbles, glass oil lamps,  pitchers (cows), owls, tiny perfume bottles, crystal, matchbooks, bricks, hotel soap, and hand fans.  There are probably more collections that I can't think of, or that quickly fell by the wayside. 

Collections provide the "spice" to my daily life.  They always have and I suspect they always will.  I love getting the opportunity to search for items to add--which is probably why I'll end up on Hoarders.  I watch that show and see myself.  I once told Martha that I was one bad life event away from becoming a hoarder.

Perhaps someone should check on me every now and then in case my piles get too high and one of them collapses on me!