This morning I noticed something.
I was actually sat on the loo (sorry if this is too much information, but that’s where I was when I noticed it). Funny how the loo is a place of contemplation, an enforced pause in the day…
I was thinking about my Dad. He used to sit on the loo reading. Mind you, he used to read just about everywhere, leaving piles of books wherever he spent any time (including in the loo) – like a paper trail.
Anyway, the thing that I noticed and that sparked thoughts of my Dad, was a wooden box. It lives in the loo holding “ladies’ things” (as my Nanna called them) although it’s redundant now. It’s just one of those small possessions that clutter the house, not really useful for anything any more, but that nobody has got round to removing.
Today though, the box caught my eye. It is looking very shabby these days, and is overdue for dusting. Once, it was shiny with varnish, but now this is marked and peeling. Varnish is another thing that’s pretty much redundant these days, isn’t it? Nowadays we have wax, and Danish oil, and wood stain. The box hails from the days before these things were commonplace, when what you used to protect wood was varnish.
I bought the box many years ago. I was a student at university at the time. My then-boyfriend was from London and had wealthy parents. I mention this only because it was indirectly responsible for bringing me to the place where I bought the box, because they were wealthy enough to own, as well as a big house in London, a little cottage in Somerset.
It was an idyllic place, off the beaten track in a tiny village, inland from the coast. There was a farmhouse opposite, on the other side of the lane, where an elderly retired farmer with a Somerset accent as rich as cream sat outside on sunny days and passed the time of day, his dog at his feet.
His grown up sons now ran the farm, and the family kept the key to the cottage. The farmer’s name was Denzil (a proper Somerset name) and he liked to chat, even though we only understood probably one word in five of what he said to us.
My boyfriend had a Mini Cooper and we drove down to the cottage from Birmingham whenever the health of the Mini, the weather, and our hectic social lives allowed. I remember we spent a whole gloriously sunny week there, free from the distractions of television and student life, revising for our exams.
It was on one of these trips to Somerset, staying in my boyfriend’s parents’ cottage, that I bought the box.
It was summertime and we had taken a day trip out in the Mini, pootling along to beaches that my boyfriend knew from his childhood and pubs that seemed lost in time. On the way back we stopped to visit a local agricultural show we happened to pass by.
After perusing the giant pigs and the cows in pens, we went into the crafts marquee. I remember little about the stalls, but I was looking for a present for my Dad’s birthday, which was at the beginning of August.
The box was bought from an elderly gentleman with a display of his handiwork in wood laid out on a white tablecloth. I bought that particular box because it is made of cedar wood, and the inside smelled of that wood’s wonderful rich scent.
I knew my Dad would like it, and so he did. The box sat in my Dad’s attic study, in pride of place on his desk, housing some of the many bits and bobs he always had about him – paper clips, pipe prodders, electrical components and the like. And there the box and I parted company.
Many years after, when my Dad died, my Mum kept his study exactly as it had been until, only a couple of years later, she died too.
We had to clear the house and, along with lots of other things (many of which still reside in our attic) the box came to me.
All of this passed through my mind as I sat, staring at it. I thought of the maker of the box, of my Dad, of Denzil… all now long dead.
But the box is still here. And no doubt will still exist after I am dead and gone too. Because things often last longer than people.
I have heard a lot recently about “decluttering”, about Marie Kondo and the Art of Tidying and about people you can pay to tell you how to empty your house of stuff you’ve accumulated when you are incapable of doing this for yourself. About how it’s important to clear your environment of such sentimental tat, or else risk your mind becoming as cluttered as your house.
I mused on this and thought: I could easily have chucked that box out. It’s just a small, shabby wooden box, with peeling varnish, it’s cedar scent long since faded. It is not even useful any more. It is nothing in the big scheme of things, just a bit of clutter.
But I’m glad I didn’t.
Because without that box, I would never have thought of those days in Somerset, nor recalled Denzil’s name; nor the cottage, the Mini, or that day, long ago, when I bought it.
I wouldn’t have been prompted to recall the smell of my Dad’s study (microscopy chemicals and old books) and the jumble of idiosyncratic tat on his desk, simultaneously both different from, and akin to, the jumble of random tat on my own table.
I wouldn’t have been reminded of the smell of his jumper, spicy with pipe smoke. Or mused upon my own mortality and the things that I will leave behind, when I go.
I doubt whether the maker of that box ever thought about what would happen to it after it left his stall that day. But the box made me think and ponder on the things that have left my stall and what will become of them.
Will they be thrown away as useless clutter? Or will they still be around in years to come? Will they last longer than me? And will they spark memories for people, of times and folk no longer here?
I hope so.
They can be powerful talismans, the things we leave behind.
Yes, they can clutter: but also define us, inspire us, reassure and console us.
Especially when infused with memories – and given meaning by love. ♥
Lovely post – I am torn between finding clutter exhausting and depressing and embracing stuff and maximalism. Maybe Marie’s point about sparking joy is the key. But I would like to see her declutter someone like me who keeps all sorts of stuff because they form my palette for my work. The one quilter I know who got rid of her stash because she had had to clear out too many fellow quilters’ stuff when they died, gave up because you need a great pile of stuff to draw on to work. Plus I love my stuff.
I know what you mean about “stuff” forming the palette for your work.
I think part of the reason I don’t find it easy to get back into working after a break is that I’ve tidied my work “palette” away. Either I can’t find things, or I just don’t have that pile of stuff to draw on in front of my eyes and it’s that that normally sparks my ideas. Tidiness and creativity aren’t best friends for me!
The nostalgic smell is what stands out here; gorgeous cedar, and that sense of smell has brought all those great vivid memories flooding back. I wonder if there are other smells you associate with good creative times in your life, to kick start the process. For example, I adore the smell of school glue, tomato soup, starch, cut grass and sun dried sheets. They all have the power to take me back to particular times when I was excited about making things.
Yes, smells can be very evocative. Alas, that cedar smell is now only a memory. The box is scentless nowadays, being over 30 years old and well used in it’s time.
I hung onto one of my mum’s jumpers for ages after she died, because it smelled of her.
Such a lovely post. I have a table that was my parents’ table when they first got married and that I remember from my childhood. I do genuinely love its yellow melamine 50s charm but also the place where someone was building a kitchen an sawed through the tabletop and the legs which show the history of a kitchen table of many many years, my parents, and my family of long ago. I think there are some things worth keeping for the memories they carry. I don’t always think of these things directly when I work at this table but it is comforting to know the memories are there.
I love hearing about your table. Tables are particularly memory-rich, aren’t they? All those times we sit around them with family and friends…
We never had a proper table in the house I grew up in. Our house had a small kitchen with no room for a table, and the dining table was one of those dark oak, drop-leaved ones, with barley-twist legs, which was kept pushed up against the wall and pulled out for meals, with us sat on folding stools. I never liked it. It was too small, and had too many legs that got in the way, and the stools were ugly and too high for the table. But there was no room for a proper one because my Dad had commandeered the front room for his study / music.
One of my first priorities when we got our own house was that it should have room for a proper family table for us to sit around.
I loved every word of this story. Not only because I have a very similar wooden box (that belonged to my mother, then me, and now my daughter), but because I also had a childhood bathroom full of books (one which my father just gifted to me when I mentioned recalling it there all those years ago) and because I am in the throes of looking through my mother’s things and seeing which ones spark stories and which ones don’t. Life is rich. Clutter can be just that, or it can be the spark (it’s the perfect word!) of stories like this one. xox
I’m glad that the story chimed with you Sue. It’s a difficult thing to do, letting go of things that belonged to a deceased parent. In a way, it’s kind of because it’s the sum of all of their things that conjures them up that makes picking and choosing so hard.
What a lovely read! I’m glad I’m not the only person that feels a nostalgia for things.My little cottage (in Somerset) has many things that spark a memory and sometimes an almost painful recollection of happy times. On my desk is a little silver gong on a stand that my mum used to call my dad in from the garden for tea. The silver gong hammer was long gone when we bought it from a junk shop in Tavistock and we always used a wooden one which gave the gong rather a dull thud. The sound of it brings back those times so vividly and makes me remember my dear mum and the pleasure she took in banging the gong! X
What a lovely memory!
I have my parents old dinner gong hanging on the wall in our living room! It’s brass and has lots of Arabic (I think) writing on it, it was brought back from Egypt by my Grandfather who fought there in the war.
Objects like this box have souls. Imagine if this neglected, patient relic was reemployed as a holder for buttons, needles, your own creative bits and bobs. Everything passes, but something remains.
I’ve thought about repurposing it again. It needs a bit of a makeover first I think!
Interesting to read your story, everyone has one. I just last week went through my Art cupboard trying to eliminate a bit of clutter, so many memories of drawings your nieces and nephew have done and some from other children – so good to remember those happy times together. What is precious to us is our stuff as we are the only ones who know the history. Alan has a round box was used by his father for handkerchieves. It is a family heirloom, not much value but significant to his family history; if these articles could talk it would be an interesting story! It lives in his wardrobe and hopefully will be passed down for a few more generations.
You will have to tell whoever it is meant for how special it is Fay. x
Oh what a gorgeous post! You weave words in the same way you stitch thread, beautifully.
Bee xx
Thank you Bee! x
Honestly, I 100% feel sorry for folk like Marie Kondo. Think how little joy there must be in a minimalists life….. just think how much joy we have in our full, clutter-filled, memory packed homes. I’m glad I’m a “keeper” and not a “thrower-outer”! Always have been and always will be, and I’m quite delighted to find my daughters seem to be much the same!