7/7/2014 The Apartment Purge Challenge Continues

This morning,  I got up and out earlier than usual - meaning I could go home earlier! yay! 

Gave my friend Mariam a ride home from work, and we made a couple of grocery stops - lots of grocery store walking - a little tired today, but not bad! 

I have still to do my "Purge" for the day - 7 items for the 7th days of the months - and a turn on the exer-bike - so off I go! 

a few hour later... 

I did get the purge done for the day -  what was originally a dining room became storage and it has become a terrible jumble over time, due to my physical inability to deal with any of it for so long - bags of things pulled from my old car when it died last year (after having been the workshop/theatre shuttle for my life every summer and become embarrassingly full of props, costumes, tools, etc... ); bags of papers, yarn, books, music, etc.  hastily packed up in order to get the living room prepped for my post surgery recovery, boxes of props and costumes and more craft tools... things that cameto me as we were cleaning out the home of a deceased friend in 2010, and i never had the heart or time to really go through... I have been ACHING to get that stuff out of there and either put away in a proper place, goven or thrown away. 

It can be overwhelming - what first? how long will it take? There's SO MUCH! 

This purge project has been absolutely perfect to get me started at a pace that wasn't overwhelming, and on a 5 item day, five items are easy to deal with! 

Well... as I was pulling things from the storage/dining room, I found a fishing tackle box. Theatre people often use tackle boxes for their mkeup kits - very handy, all the compartments, just the right size, etc. 

This is an old, green metal one, well-used and well loved. It belonged to one of my former college professors and subsequently dear friend, Charlotte Starbird, She was a curmudgeon, and didn't suffer fools gladly, and occasionally I was that fool - but we had an abiding friendship over 30+ years. When she died in 2010, I was among the friends who cleared out her home. Her family swept in from Los Angeles the day before she died, their first visit in those almost 40 years she had lived and taught theatre here. THey clered out the valuable pieces, checking the bottoms of things for signatures... and left the rest that they considered trash to us. 

I orchestrated her memorial celebration, and many mementos were shown there, and then ended up in my car, and then just hastily packed up, and then eventually brought into the apartment with the help of friends on the rainy day my car broke down. 

There they have stayed in a jumbled pile through two surgeries and recoveries, as I became srong enough to lift and move all of those things out into the living room to see what they actually were. 

I knew the tackle box was there and it had been her theatre kit. And tonight I was ready to purge it. 

Then, I opened it. And I saw the reflection of what I, as an actress and theatre practitioner  also have, and probably every actor in the world after a fashion.  box with practical things - cauze and cotton and tiny glass bottle of mercurachrome, a sewing kit, and a few tiny bottles of perfume... all the makeup had long gone as she stopped doing theatre. It was a time capsule. It reminded me of the cigar box full of keepsakes seen in the opening credits of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Memories, gifts, well wishes - cards for opening nights, a 3x5 card inviting her to the opening night party of a show... a tiny, decrepit  2" long Surrey with the Fringe on Top drawn by a tiny horse, precariously glued to a small card that said, "Oklamoha".

A wee book 1/2 " high, with "How to Succeed" written on the front... a tiny metal figurine glued to a card with "Camelot" printed on it... a very small, fancy pin cushion, and a little troll doll pin... two plastic music box ballerinas (She had studied ballet before early arthritis ground away her hip).  

A small pocket size edition of The Rubayat by Omar Khayyam with a lovely Art Noveau design on the cover. 

I tried to throw several things out, determined to be practical and carry on with the purge... but they had lived so long together in that box - some of the things dated 1964... So, I opened the box and arranged all of the things so they could be seen, and I took careful, loving portraits of them. Once I was satisfied that they were preserved in photography, I kept the gauze and mercurachrome (cool Vintage packaging), the troll doll for luck, the tiny pin cushion and a comb, arranged them neatly and latched the box. Then, I was able to toss the other items - the perfume bottles now so old, but still extremely - erm - fragrant... and have a good conscience about it. They may be "just things" - but they are imbued with a life and a history, and love. I needed to give them respect for that. 

And that 's how I met my purge quota of 7 items today. 

As it continues, I feel lighter and happier (As always happens with a good purge of "stuff"), and so pleased that there's nothing I can't physically do in this project! I don't need any help at all - there's no shame in help, I certainly know THAT - but it feels brilliant to be independent!!

Of course. I also missed getting on my exercycle. Tomorrow, and tomorrow... I will be very stiff tomorrow - and looking at the clock now, even more tired. That's life!