2 posts tagged “collections”

I found the remains of my childhood "coin collection" buried deep in my closet.  I don't even know where I got half of them.  This is what I have:

Canadian - one "loony" and one "toony" (one-dollar and two-dollar coins, respectively), two 25-cent pieces, two 10-cent pieces, and four pennies.

British - two five-pence coins, two two-pence coins, six pennies.

German - two different two-pfennig coins, one from 1989 (reading "Deutsche Demokratische Republik") and one from 1992 (reading "Bundesrepublik Deutschland"), and one 2-pfennig coin.  I'd really like to find out the history behind the two types of coins.

Austrian - two one-Schilling coins and one ten-Groschen coin.  I'm not exactly sure how the math works in that currency.

Swiss - two 1/2-franc coins

I also somehow ended up with one Swedish ore and one Greek drachma; who knows where those came from.

Let me explain what I mean.

First of all, my family has started preparing the house in order to make it more saleable when they move out to Seattle in a couple of years.  (Yes, there's that much to do.  It's a 100-plus-year-old house and the kitchen still looks like it's 1973.)  This means that there is a considerable amount of stuff that's no longer going to be needed, which probably means that there's going to be a fairly big garage sale at some point this summer.

Second, I have plans for re-arranging the furniture in my room that involves replacing my desk with a smaller one, getting rid of the long-dead Windows 95 computer that's been collecting dust for over a year now, and moving some things around.  In a roundabout way, that means I'm going to have to get rid of a lot of my own stuff, which I don't really mind, because what with all of the packing boxes from my dorm room I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff in here.  However, it also means having to be brutal with myself as to what things I can keep.

The biggest thing, however, is that due to a combination of both of the above circumstances, I have to start clearing out my cat closet.

For those of you who don't understand the significance of this, let me explain.  Sometime in late elementary school or junior high, at the peak of my Cats obsession, I started collecting all of the cat paraphernalia I could lay my hands on and displaying it in my walk-in closet.  This meant stuffed animals, magazine photos, figurines, clothing, books, and many odder things.  It wasn't limited to domestic cats, either; I included wild cats of all types.

Eventually, this escalated to a walk-in closet that couldn't really be walked into, considering that I'd moved my lion, tiger and leopard displays to the floor.  One shelf contained all of my stuffed domestic cats, another contained all of my domestic cat figurines, and a third displayed a scale model of the Cats set (which once contained Beanie Babies standing in for characters until I switched to paper cutouts.  I'm very proud of this).  A bookshelf that had been moved into the closet contained all of my cat-related literature, as well as most of the cat-related household objects (saltshakers, statuettes, notebooks, etc.), and was topped with the other crown of my collection, my ragtag temple to the cat goddess Bastet.  (This was purely for decorational purposes; I don't actually follow Egyptian polytheism.)  The walls, including the ceiling were covered entirely in pictures of cats, except for the space where I had stuck up black construction paper to simulate the sky for the stage set.  On the clothing rack were cat- and animal-print clothing, as well as costume pieces for a long-abandoned Cats production; more of these supplies were in plastic crates under the shelves.

I don't think I'm bragging when I say this collection was staggering.  I say "was" because over this past Christmas break, I came to the unhappy realization that since we had begun the preparations for our eventual move out of the house, I would have to start bagging up my cat things. 

The bagging process itself was relatively painless.  I sorted my things into the most sentimental or the prettiest, which I would probably keep in some setting or other; the rest I put in plastic crates or garbage bags.  One crate was set aside for things like Beanie Babies and other collectibles that I might be able to make some money from.  I left up the Cats set, most of the better costume pieces, the Bastet temple, the "wallpaper", and my shelf of books, the latter because I ran out of time to sort.

Now, however, I'm faced with both the process of actually getting rid of the things I sorted and the prospect of having to take down all of the pictures from the walls.  This is particularly painful because in an indirect way, taking down the pictures will eventually lead to having to dismantle my Cats set.  Process:

1) I take down all of my thousands of pictures, keeping my favorites.  (This will take a while.)

2) The paint underneath doesn't match the paint in the rest of my room, since it was covered when I was redecorating.  I must paint the closet to match.

3) In order to paint, I also have to take down the black paper that serves as the sky for the set.

4) The set looks sloppy and incomplete without the sky, and I can't put it back up because it will ruin the new paint.  I must take down the set.

This stuff has been with me for about eight years now, maybe more; I can't remember exactly when it started.  I really don't know how to deal with all of this.