What makes me save the wrong things - a Rant

I've written about this before:  I save things that don't fit because I can't find what does fit. Several years ago in L.A. a podiatrist reluctantly discussed my metatarsal arch problem and sent me to an orthotics shop.  They brought out a tiny metatarsal support, made me stand on it until we found exactly where it worked best (which is under the metatarsal bones near the middle of my foot, not under the metatarsal arch) and glued one permanently in each shoe.  Last time I went there, they had gone out of business.

I've searched the stores and the web and all I can find are supports that are too big.  So I'm wearing my old lumpy clogs around the house.  Sheer desperation.  When I have to go out, my newer clogs are making my foot problems worse.

I need pants with a long rise, because I have buns and a long torso, and such pants apparently don't exist.  I have to buy a bigger size and then have that pair altered extensively.  The last time, the tailor got a little too eager, so now they're on the hanger until I lose a couple pounds.

Men's pants used to have a rise specified, but now I don't even see that in the catalogs.

What makes you wear the wrong thing?

ASK SANTA TO BRING A CARPENTER (and where to take him shopping)

As a former closet designer, it is my duty to tell you a lot of clothes closets could use a kitchen designer, but a very experienced, truly innovative kitchen designer.  Maybe even better is shopping in a kitchen store.

Kitchen stores are a wonderland of gadgets and especially places to put things.  My last design department job was in a such a store.  There were interesting cabinets and shelves and gadgets that I could imagine in a wardrobe closet.

For example, I once did an attic wardrobe closet that had loads of floor space and not quite enough wall space for the shelves people had pictured.   But if I had worked in the kitchen design store first, I could have solved this with at least one of these . . .

Kitchen cabinet manufacturers now feature a magic "drawer" that is the world's tallest and skinniest.  It pulls out to reveal about six feet by three feet of shallow shelves on a backboard,  for skinny grinders or skillets too heavy to stack or platters or trays or whatever needs shallow, vertical space.

Think how many flats and loafers and driving shoes you could put in pockets on such a thing!  How many sandals!   Think how many scarves or belts (or neckties for Santa) would be easy to see and never get dusty!  Imagine never standing foolishly on a chair to reach the shoe boxes on the top shelf.  Never snagging a blouse as you reach to the back of a regular closet.

And where pull-out cutting boards are available, you could install one in a wardrobe cabinet to keep things neat as you choose the bottom sweater in the stack.  Or as a folding shelf.

You'll get some good ideas yourself.  The tough part is not spending your holiday money on a new kitchen instead of your wardrobe closet.

OPENING CONFESSION

Several years ago I was starting my book on clutter.  My friend Kristen said:  We want to hear more of your story. 

That seems only fair, right?  So here goes.  I'm getting ready to move.  Again.  A dear friend gave me a gift of a great room to live in for a year.  The year is ending.  I am moving to another state.   Not enough mostly yard-sale furniture for a moving van.  So me, suitcases, laptop, cane, and UPS.

When I moved out of my old apartment, my family helped me shred mountains of paper, altough I'd had a computer for years.  Now I'm still throowing away paper. It's been embarassing.   Research findings that never turned into writing.  Writing that never got finished, some of which is already in the computer.  Some of which went on two thumb drives when the desktop outfit finally died.  Total, not go-to-the-tech died.  And what to do with fistfuls of medical insurance reports and bank statements and ugh.

What's even more embarrassing is that I was regretting saying goodbye to my right-height "desk," and my two sorta good, lamps, the burl end table and some dishes.  But the one thing I will need most in my new room, is my 'posture" chair and the ottoman.  And I don't know how to get them to Texas.

Since I recently had spinal fusion, I can't roll my wonderful rolling file, or reach into the file drawers, or get things off the bottom shelf of the folding shelves.  But I want to whine anyway about giving them up.

 Then the internet intervened.  There is a video called something about a changed coastline on the eastern US.   Forever.  I didn't even watch the whole thing.  It's not too hard to guess what it's like to watch your entire home tip into the sea.  No dryout, no rebuild.  Nothing.

That put my lamp, and file drawers, and folding shelves into perspective right away.  Especially since I once lived six houses from the other ocean, and I grew up on stories of what even Lake Michigan can destroy.

And I was also reminded of an article on the web maybe a year ago. The reported was in another country interviewing a woman whose humble dwelling had been filled with muddy water in a flash flood.  Her family was dragging some soaked items up a hill to where they would try to camp.  She told the reporter that she thanked God for letting the flood in the daytime, for had it been at night, they would all have drowned.   

More later. . .