CLEANING MY CLOSET. Things I have and don’t need.

Yesterday I looked through my kitchen drawer for string. No string. But I found four little plastic cups, protective covers for the legs of a table that would be retro-chic if I still had it.

Further back in the same drawer I found a boxful of earrings which amount to A HISTORY OF CUSTOM JEWELLERY in the late 20^th century. Remember thin gold hoops that got tangled in your hair? Remember Indian jewellery with little bells that made your ears ring? They still exist, in my kitchen drawer.

Then there is the Mexican straw hat that’s hanging on a nail above my husband’s workbench. If memory serves, it came with a ride on a shaggy donkey parked in front of our hotel in Acapulco. Actually, not a ride, just a sitting for photographic purposes. We have four pics to document that event: the four members of our family each sitting on the same sad animal, wearing the same sad hat that’s in our basement now.

And speaking of workbenches. Do we really need three screwdrivers, each with pockets of exchangeable bits? Yes, we do. Or did. Because either they couldn’t be found when needed, or the required exchangeable bit was missing from the set. Could we discard two of them now? No way. According to my husband, you can never have enough screwdrivers.

Nonsense, I said.

But I’m only quoting you! he said.

He was referring to a recent conversation we had about my bedroom closet. But clothes aren’t screwdrivers! On second look, I grant you: I’ll probably never wear that brown business suit again. I don’t know why I bought it in the first place. I have nothing to go with it. I loathe brown. I bought it for a conference in LA and wore it exactly once.

For that occasion, I unearthed a bank-breaking pair of snake leather shoes which I had bought ten years earlier and worn exactly once because I loathe brown. I dug them out because they went with the brown suit.

When I landed in LA and stepped into the neon light of the arrival lounge, I noticed that the tips of my snake shoes looked brittle. By the time I got into the taxi, my toes were visible through the rapidly shredding tips of my shoes. I made it to my hotel room before they turned to dust. I guess snakes can’t survive in a closet for ten years. Anyway: I spent the remainder of the evening shopping for brown shoes. Has anyone told you that they don’t carry size 10 in fashionable shops in LA? I ended up with an unfashionable pair, which I wore exactly once and, for all I know, are still at the back of my closet. But I’m hoping they turned to dust and got sucked into the vacuum cleaner.

Which brings me to my bathroom closet, that is to say, THE HISTORY OF MY HEALTH. A quick survey shows that I had many colds and often suffered from heart burn, that I favour Aspirin (2 empty bottles) over Ibuprofen (one full bottle), that I thought I needed calming down (Manerix, full bottle) but had second thoughts and preferred to keep up to speed, that I did not follow doctor’s instructions and failed to take all of my antibiotics right up to Day 10. That I once believed in the possibility of improving my memory with pills (forgotten now if it were not for three packages of foil embedded stuff gone powdery). Also, that I believed in the possibility of strengthening my nails and hair. But I reserve that for another blog on THE HISTORY OF MY BEAUTY.