When I was a little girl, I became aware that I had a lot more stuff than a lot of girls and boys my age. I didn't think a lot about it because we had only two children in my family, and a lot of families had four or five children. Obviously, I thought, the toys, books, and furniture would need to be spread out between more children than they needed to be at my house. Also in those years, a lot of families in the US moved every few years for their father's job. My parents were a little unusual in the era. They both had established careers and had traveled extensively internationally before marrying and having children. The large home they bought and restored wasn't to be a home for a few years, but a home for all seasons. They weren't concerned with being able to move easily with children every couple of years, and so they didn't mind collecting furniture, decorative items or books.
Since my parents were consumed by the labor of love of restoring their post civil war manse, many weekends were spent at auctions, estate sales, second hand shops, garage sales, and even at bona fide antique shops. In that era especially, one could buy some lovely things without spending a great deal of money. When friends came to my birthday parties, they were surprised that I had such a large bedroom with a high ceiling and a chandelier. I had a canopy bed, a French provincial desk, a large bookcase, and two large closets. It's a good thing we didn't open the closets while they were there, because they were filled with dress up clothes and lots of dolls. My desk and my bookcase were busy places. I might have been one of the few eight year olds who actually had a file cabinet with paperwork kept in alphabetical order. The arrangement of that side of the room probably looked as if I were practicing law rather than childhood. My large bookcase had an entire Worldbook encyclopedia a family had sold us while moving at their garage sale, for about five dollars. I wasn't particularly neat in those years. The more things a child has, the harder it is for them to keep them in an orderly fashion. Although I usually knew where most things were, the room probably wasn't always as neat as one might expect a little girl to keep it.
At about thirteen, I got tired of my locker in school, my desk and my desk at home being messy. My mother reported that one day, out of the blue, I cleaned everything, and put it all in order, and kept it that way from then on. I just got tired of having misplaced a couple of important assignments for school, I said.
I was aware that most children donated, gave away to friends or younger siblings, or sold toys or possessions each year, usually before their birthdays or Christmas. We never did that. If we liked it enough to give it space, then it was likely remaining there until it was replaced, or wore out. Other than mattresses or refrigerators, I don't think my parents bought very much that was new. What they did buy was usually very nice though.
When I finished high school and went to college, I was sixteen. My mother thought that it was time to find homes for a lot of the items I had in my youth, particularly the collection of soft toys I'd won at the annual fair. She rented flea market tables, and one Saturday I sold jewelry, clothing, girl scout regalia, shoes, bags, books,soft toys, some dolls, jewel boxes, my French telephone, and every game imaginable. My mother also brought some things from the house to be sold there. My mother set the prices for everything, and had a label on each piece. I couldn't believe how much people paid for some of the things I'd had for years, but I understood. In order to begin to collect things that would become a part of my adulthood, I needed to part with at least some of the items that had graced my youth. It was also time for other people to enjoy some of the things I'd had.
I managed a minimalist existence throughout college, and for a few years after getting married. It helped that my first house was tiny and that the space constraints alone dictated that I couldn't collect very much. We collected the normal items when my first son and daughter were born. Then, like many American families, we moved about every four years, in part for jobs and also in order to acquire a larger home, as our family grew. Eventually, those moves took us to other states.
By the 1990s, we had recouped the space I had known as a child, and we had a large family. They each had a lot of books and items they cared about. In this era, a lot of people like modern decor and the minimalist thinking had entered full swing. A lot of suburbanites felt economically stable and so they parted with most things rather readily thinking that if ever they needed one again that they could simply buy another one. I wasn't this way. I kept disaster supplies, large fans in case the air conditioning went out, vaporizers, baby baths long after we had babies, glassware, silverware, and pet supplies. I kept everything organized. When a friend needed a vaporizer, I could run a new one over to her.
As my children grew, my ancestors passed. I became the curator to pictures, possessions, Bibles and a few antiques that belonged to aunts and ancestors. When my in-laws passed early, we acquired more.I will admit to occasionally being frustrated as to what to keep, as no one can keep it all.
As our children were in college and in high school, each of my parents passed. They had divorced when I had been a young adult and they had each had time to amass at least twenty years worth of household goods, antiques, books, and documents on their own. My father, who passed the year after my mother, had almost three floors of things, some of which were valuable. It took years to go through many of these items.
Recently, I was reading about my paternal grandmother's family who settled in Nova Scotia, in the 1730s. The family had retained every document that concerned their businesses, their estates, and their correspondence to one another, a lot of which discussed the history and their concerns at the time. These documents have become a part of the Nova Scotia Archives and have been uploaded to the internet for historical purposes. As I read through their correspondence, I recognized these people. They kept everything, and accounted for everything in inventories when someone died, for tax purposes. They kept everyone's correspondence! If they'd had photographs in the 1730s, I know they would have kept those too ! I realized that my family has likely not changed much since the 1770s. We still write a lot of letters to one another. We still hold on to whatever we can. We still love our children as much as we have loved life itself. I might be a family historian and a pack rat, but I came by this honestly. There is probably a marker in our DNA which will eventually be found to account for our detail to record keeping, and for the safekeeping of family records. Perhaps I have never wanted to be a minimalist anyway.
