A Peek Inside the Dollhouses
We weren’t allowed to talk about our dreams when we were kids. I don’t mean dreams for the future, I mean the ones that happened the night before, sometime between turning off the lights and shuffling into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. My mom made this rule, probably after many mornings listening to my very creative youngest sister recount multi-layered dreams involving life in the Smurf village. I get it. But let me, just for a minute, tell you about my dream last night.
I was in Paris, staying in an Airbnb that came with a black and white Australian shepherd. The dog and I were cuddling on the floor when he turned to me and said, “we have too much.” “Too much of what?” I asked in that unfazed way one does when weird things happen in dreams. “Stuff,” replied the dog, “we have too much stuff.”
This week’s episode of The Food Podcast was supposed to be about cookbooks; I interviewed Kris Warman who writes cookbook reviews over at shipshapeeatworthy.com. But we dove in, as I often do, with something different; we talked about collections. Kris has a substantial cookbook collection. Publishers send her books to review. She collects them. She loves them. She also has other collections, from oil paintings to cookware to antique lockets. Her home, when the pandemic began, was filled with these collections. But then long days surrounded by stuff became weeks, months, then two years. She had visions of being crushed by towering stacks of cookbooks. It was all too much. So, she began divesting her collections using a simple, Marie Kondo-ish criteria: does it bring her joy? Does it resonate with her family? One thousand cookbooks became 400. Kris now has a one-in one-out policy. Her collections grew smaller, and her life felt lighter.
Divesting is hard when you've inherited a collection. Around the twenty minute mark in the episode I share how my mother-in-law Rose’s house is filled with her aunty Amy’s collections. Every porcelain cow, every antique doll and every thimble holds a memory of Amy: wool skirts, white hair twisted and fastened at the back, bright eyes, her tiny house next to the sea, a little white dog and a soft, singsongy voice. And I haven’t even mentioned the nine Victorian dollhouses that Amy passed along to Rose. Over her lifetime Amy furnished each room of every house with everything from copper pots, to oil paintings and serving dishes to chamber pots. Whenever I peer inside one of the houses I see something new. Last time it was a tiny bar of Pears soap, about the size of the tip of my thumb.
It’s true, we have too much stuff. But I love opening these houses and escaping into tiny worlds. What’s the story of the Dalmatian on in the parlour? Or how about that cherubic gal with her hands outstretched, questioning? What kind of sauces were made in that family of pots?
I can see they’re bringing me joy. If it’s joyful, it isn’t stuff.
Listen to Season 2, Episode 3 of The Food Podcast right here.