On Less

I'm an accumulator by nature.

I come from a family of collectors and accumulators: get it now because it might not be here.  You like this?  You should have it.  It's on sale?  You might never find it at this price again.

I'm an accumulator by nature.

I'm a little hungry and so I eat a bowl of cereal.  I don't wait to feel full and eat another.  I'm restless, so I browse the pantry.  I don't want to feel hungry later so I have three snacks.  I'm so hungry that I eat half the bag of chips.  That pasta tastes so good, I'll have another bowl.

And even though this seems to be my nature--to collect, accumulate, live in this mindset of scarcity--I don't like living with the extra.  Because when you're an accumulator, you'll soon have two people and a tiny dog living in a four-bedroom house with three closets full of your stuff, not all of it important, not all of it sentimental, not all of it useful.  And you'll go from being at a perfectly healthy weight and size to a size that might look fine, but with your family history of high blood pressure and heart disease and high cholesterol is, well, less than ideal--and that backache every morning?  It's not your pillow or mattress.

This is a year for less.

I'm finally settling into a word.

Less stuff.  Less accumulation.  

It's also a year for more.

More space.  More clarity.  More movement.  More strength.  More freedom.

I'm Moving

[moving cards by sweet and crafty]

I've lost my blogging rhythm and style and realized I've outgrown this space.  So I'm starting over, because I needed a blank slate, rather than just changes.  I thought I was done blogging altogether, but I think I'm just done here.

Come visit me in my new virtual home, won't you?

Just Read(ing): The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, by Caroline Preston

[a page from the book]

Caroline Preston loves vintage ephemera.  According to her bio, she spent hours in the attic of her parents' home with generations of scrapbooks as a girl and worked as an archivist as an adult.  This love of ephemera and archives grew into The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, which is something like a graphic novel--it's a story told through an artful mix of 1920s memorabilia and captions typed on a vintage Corona typewriter and assembled by Preston.  It is also really fun to read.  I'm only two chapters in, but this book is so different and fun that I wanted to share already.  I got a copy at the library, but I might have to buy it for myself if the rest of the book is as fun to read.