Clutter Master

I am quite unable to part with things that have some personal meaning for me.  For example:  I have this little ash tray on my bookshelf (way overloaded with books).  A dear friend gave this ashtray to me after she visited NYC and got it at the Cafe Un,Deux,Trois in the Village.  Since I no longer smoke, it's now loaded with tiny bits of sea glass that I harvested in Capri a number of years ago, plus a wee scallop shell from the same place, half a lovely geode (gift from one of my kids), a tiny feather whose provenance I can no longer remember--safe to toss that!!--a button belonging to a sweater I still have (still useful, can sew it on today, in fact!), and a small red ceramic bird whistle from Brazil given to me by a lovely Brazilleira.  Multiply this kind  of acquisitiveness by many years, and you get the picture.  Clutter City.  Must do better.  Sally gave me a book two Christmases ago:  THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP by Marie Kondo.  I haven't worked through everything (anything) the author suggests, but I am getting there.  Kondo asks, regarding the inability to discard things:  is this attachment to the past?  or anxiety about the future?  Both, I'd say.  She says, "Life becomes far easier once you know that things will work out even if you are lacking something." 

No end to joy.....

I have been reading with great enjoyment a book by Alexander McCall Smith:  In the Company of Cheerful Ladies.

Here is a paragraph that struck me, now that I'm entering my 80th year, as one of the key delights of an old woman's life: 

The two women had known one another for many years, and had moved into that most comfortable of territories, that of an old friendship that could be picked up and put down at will with no damage.  Sometimes several months would go by without the two seeing one another, and this would make no difference.  A conversation left unfinished at the beginning of the hot season could be resumed after the rains; a question asked in January might be answered in June, or even later, or indeed not at all.  There was no need for formality or caution, and the faults of each were known to the other.