Curating a Collection.featured
Once we decided to live in an apartment, we made a commitment that this was the life we were choosing and we would live that life fully. That meant no storage unit or basement full of forgotten items promising vague security if we changed our minds. Which also meant that we needed to move beyond eliminating obvious excess to decide which of the items that remained added value to our lives. We donated a large outdoor nativity which had taken months to procure to our church. I gave away my wedding dress. We gifted our little-used KitchenAid to my foodie brother.
By far the hardest thing for us to eliminate was books. It goes without saying to anyone who knows our family that we love books. They are a central part of who we are as individuals and as a family. When I was fifteen, I filled the limited space I was given on our annual family road trip entirely with works of literature I had read over the last year. Even now, we add significant weight to our travel back packs bringing books for nightly story time. It wasn’t by mistake then that this was one of the last areas we addressed. We needed the momentum of seeing our evenings free of monotonous chores. Of regularly completing our now manageable to-do lists. Of living in a space that housed an appropriate amount of furniture and things rather than one that was overfilled waiting for another life to start. We needed to see the full value of minimalism at work for us before approaching items that held attachment.
Like any lover of words, I prepared for our impending downsizing by reading stories and articles written by people who had been through the process. The mindset that most resonated with me was that of creating a curated collection. When I envisioned the homes of fellow book lovers whom I admired, it was clear that not every book they had ever read made it onto their shelves. The stories they chose to keep were a window into themselves, and it made their collections beautiful. Approaching the process from this perspective, it became easier to remove the random book from a college book club that never met. And the outdated medical book and college calculus text. We were able to admit that even though we could see the inherent value in certain books, we didn’t enjoy them. We cut our collection in half. Which is fortunate since our previously packed bookshelves hadn’t yet housed the children’s library we were quickly accruing.
When we moved into our apartment, we decided to limit our collection to only the items that would fit on our current bookshelves. We knew that hidden or packed away items, regardless of how dearly they were loved, would eventually be forgotten. Since the bookshelves were still overflowing, we went through another round of downsizing. This time we found it easier to remove parts of our collection that no longer held significance for us. Books that we had enjoyed but had no desire to read again. Texts from classes that held significance even though the specific book did not. We downsized children’s books to our most loved stories and ones that would be difficult to find at the library. We have a good deal more work to do before our collection is a curated representation of who we are. But we also have extra space on our bookshelf, anxiously waiting to be filled with our next chapter.
