I live in two houses.
There’s the real one. She’s old. She’s quirky. She has front and back stairways, quirky corners and a normal, finite amount of wall space. I love her.
Then there’s the other one — the one in my head — and oh, she is grand. Library? Of course. Sunroom? Naturally. The grand house is the kind of house that’s so big it needs random little round tables standing around doing absolutely nothing, just holding a vase and looking expensive. If you’ve ever watched a movie where the rich person’s house has a table whose entire job is “be a table in the center of the foyer,” you know what I mean. GirlWonder has a table room in her home now. I’m envious. I can admit that.
Here’s the problem. I shop for that grand house.
We already own enough table settings to easily serve dinner to 80 people, 100 even if they don’t all simultaneously need salad forks. Just a few weeks ago I was at an estate sale. What do I spy with my little eye but … more dishes. Pretty ones! Oh, how I swooned! Only $20. I saw them, and I swear I could see the whole scene — the grand dining room, the grand dinner party, guests saying “oh, these dishes!” I have never thrown that dinner party. I don’t know who those guests were supposed to be. But the dishes came home with me, and two weeks — two! — later I gave them away, because it turns out the real house already had dishes. Plenty. An almost aggressive amount of dishes, really.
Then there was the bird print. The print is genuinely pretty. Birds, tasteful, the works. It has been propped in various places in my home because I can’t commit.
To be fair, I’m not just wishy-washy. Every single wall in our real house is spoken for. Every single one. I carried that print from room to room like a realtor.
“And over here we have a lovely — no. Taken.”
GirlWonder finally asked the obvious question, which was where exactly I thought it was going to go? I did not have an answer that didn’t involve a house that we do not actually live in.
You’d think that would teach a person something.
Spoiler alert: it did not.
Not long after the dishes debacle, I found myself the proud owner of a brown marble-topped table. To be fair, it had feet. I was helpless! It’s a known fact that furniture with feet — claw, ball, paw — is my weakness. Creaky old things with a personality? Do not threaten me with a good time!
I lugged that thing home, and it currently sits in the upstairs hall holding a fern that isn’t long for this world. It looks, honestly, like it wandered in from the grand house and decided to slum it with us for a while. I love it in a way that’s probably not healthy. I also am not entirely sure it fits there. This is not, after all, the upstairs foyer in the GRAND house. It is our house. The table is on probation. Two weeks to earn the spot or join the great donation migration.
The thing I’ve started to understand — usually while holding something breakable — is that the voice that gets me isn’t really about the object. It’s the other voice. The “it’ll be gone, and you’ll be sorry” voice. She is an excellent salesperson. She has sold me a lot of dishes, throw pillows and, somewhat inexplicably, ottomans. Preferably with feet.
So I’ve got a new move now. Catch and release. I pick the item up. I admire it properly. I take its picture, like a fisherman holding up a fish he’s proud of. And then back it goes, onto the shelf, where it can wait for somebody who actually has the room.
Last week I released a wicker table — $6, very cute, leg wobbling like a baby deer — and I thought about it maybe twice on the drive home and then never again. Six dollars, still mine. I survived the whole entire experience. Growth is possible at any age, apparently.
So the rule now, the house rule, is one question: where exactly will this live? An actual spot, in the actual house, doing an actual job. If I can point to the spot, we can talk. If I start describing rooms that don’t exist, the item and I part ways.
The grand house is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. In my head there are round tables in all the corners and not one of them wobbles. But the real house is the one with my people in it. And our dogs. And one marble table in the upstairs hall, holding its breath, hoping it gets to stay.
(Kymberly Foster Seabolt welcomes thrift tips in care of KymberlyFosterSeabolt.com; P.O. Box 38, Salem, Ohio 44460; or FosterSeabolt@gmail.com.)
