Moving On Up

I stopped into the new location of Village Merchants, which I first mentioned in this post a while back.  They are my favorite thrift store in town, which I thought might change after they moved, but they are even better now if that can be believed.  They are now on SE Division & 41st, about 7 blocks from their old building, which I heard I going to be torn down to make way for a new building.  Village Merchants is now bigger and better!  I mean, wayyy bigger!  They even have an upstairs!  There's more parking too, not that that was a huge problem before.  Now it'll be easier to lug bags of stuff I want to sell inside though.  Whoooppeee!!

Today was half great and half "Huh?"  I had dim sum with my friend Ann at a great place called Ocean City on SE 82nd.  We both had a feast with hot tea for under $20!!  After I ran a couple errands I took a long nap without meaning to.  When I woke up I thought it was only 6pm but it was 7:30!  I watched Twin Peaks with some friends and came back home.  I hope I get more done tomorrow, when I went to bed last night I couldn't sleep until about 4am so I think I just need a fresh start.

I've been thinking a lot about where I was last year with mental health and such, and how far I've come with managing grief, anxiety and depression.  Whoever tells you that there are these stages you go through to get to a healing place are full of crap.  The phases come and go.  I really am in a much better place but I've accepted that I'll be dealing with many of these issues for years to come.  This time last year I was having anxiety and panic attacks everyday, so bad that I went to see a doctor to make sure my heart was working properly.  I still have problems but I'm learning how to manage them instead of hoping they fade away someday.

That said, I couldn't help but notice that the blog post with the most hits was the one tagged with "mental illness".  Ha ha ha!!  Sorry, no big revelations there folks.  

Question All Advice

At this moment I'd like to mention a few bits of advice that I've heard from so-called organizing gurus that I don't think are especially helpful to me.  Not that you should ignore them completely, but I think it's best for you to come up with your own system of doing things after considering the angles.

Here's one thing I hear a lot: "If you haven't used/worn it in a year, get rid of it.  You'll never use it."

My amendment to that is, put the thing in question in a place where you'll see it a lot.  That is, if you really kind of like it and hate the thought of parting with it straight off.  Give yourself a little time to decide.  It's not like it's going to get any bigger and take up MORE space.

A similar maxim to the above is, if you catch yourself saying, "I might use this someday, I can't get rid of it," well, maybe you will really use it again someday!  But again, you need to have it where you can think about it more than you have been.  It's true that we tend to pack things away and forget about them, then dig them out and get excited all over again about having them.  The trick is to put it in your own way for a while so you will actually use it.

I'm no minimalist, as my friends will tell you, but I hate random piles of detritus collecting everywhere.  That's why I have a couple cupboards where I just keep tchotchkes that I intend to rotate in and out of the bric-a-brac I keep out on display fulltime.  I try not to keep buying new things is all.  When you have some pretty objets that you can switch out with the vases and such, your home feels like a new place all of  a sudden.

Not long ago, I did empty out a number of boxes of china artifacts I'd been storing and I did decide that they no longer suited my tastes.  I put a few on eBay, and some I ended up taking to a vintage store I love, Village Merchants.  They are in Portland, on SE Division.  They will give cash for things they take, but I always get trade which ends up being worth more.  Then I can get something that I really want or need.  This store has furniture and other home decor stuff, but they also have clothing and jewelry.  I can't say how much I love this place!  One of my favorite stores in Portland, hands down.

Helpful hints from Mama Ingrid, et al

Isabella Rossellini wrote a memoir called Some of Me, in which she shared her mother's (Ingrid Bergman, that is) own methods for cleaning up after a party at the Rossellini household.  That advice was, never leave the room empty handed.  That's something I'm taking to heart these days, but I'm taking it a step further.  I never leave the house without something in my hand, or my car, that I won't be bringing back to take up space in my house again!  For example, I take stuff to Goodwill, or to Far West Fibers, which is the massive recycling center off SE Holgate in Portland.  You can take shoes, appliances, and white styrofoam there!

One of my friends told me about a cleanup he did at his own house, where he decided that nothing he didn't want was going back into his bedroom.  So now I'm looking at things more critically to determine if I really want the things I'm keeping around. 

Today I didn't do a whole lot, though I tried.  I put a few things in the car to take over to Village Merchants, one of my favorite thrift stores in town, on SE Division.  When I got there I remembered that they don't take items on Sundays.  So, those things are still in my car.

I shifted a few things around in the basement and took a few things upstairs to sort, so there is a nearly detectable improvement.  At least there are no more falling boxes.

So in the photo above, we have the same view on two different nights.  The one on the left is from tonight, so that is the "after" shot.  I'm getting somewhere but am I just putting the crap in my living space upstairs?  Am I just kidding myself?

PS: I just finished Dangerous Angels, the collected novels of the Weetzie Bat series by Francesca Lia Block.  It was so good, I had borrowed it from the library but I want to get my own copy to keep.  It's a perfect manual for finding love and beauty in a fucked up and dangerous world, and not losing hope.  It's just what I needed to read right at this time in my life.