Day Two Hundred

One of my current projects is Item #68, to reduce my teacup collection and store and/or display it properly. I never really set out to collect teacups, but I like tea and china and all things tea-related, so it wasn't terribly surprising that I ended up with quite a lot of teacups. My grandmother offered me several of her cup-and-saucer sets when she moved from the large family home to a much smaller apartment, and I was happy to take them in. The little English tea shop downtown (now closed, much to my dismay) had a few sets that begged to come home with me, a missionary friend brought back a couple from Moscow, and after twenty years of this, I discovered that I now collected teacups.

Some I'll keep forever - the lovely Dutch china in blue-and-white, the gold-accented Russian set, the pale pink rose-patterned set from my grandma (who still wears tiny pink roses in her hair whenever they're in bloom), and the set with tiny violets that I admired for five years before finally buying them. But I have far more than necessary for even a fairly serious tea habit, and it's time for some of them to find new homes. A few are displayed on a wooden shelf, the ones I use the most are in the cupboard (in stacks, I know, that's terrible), but the rest are in a cardboard box and in grave danger of being smashed all to bits if anything knocks into them.

This one was the first to go, not because I don't like it, but because Grandma gave me two:


My sister lost her home to a wildfire in 2007, and a lifetime's worth of belongings were reduced to ashes. A few teacups survived the fierce heat, their paint bubbled and scorched, and one or two were nearly untouched. Since she has nothing left of the family heirlooms that had been passed down to her, I thought some of Grandma's teacups could join the hardy survivors on the display shelf in her kitchen. I've sent one a month for the last two months, and as soon as she gets settled from the 1000-mile move she's packing for as I write, I'll send the next one to her new address.

I am finding that I like getting rid of things.

I like it even more when the things find new homes with people who will love them.

And if the person in question is somebody I love, well, that's pretty much perfect.