Feest Isolation Days – 15 May
There are objects around our house, and I’m sure yours too, and you wonder, why? Just why would I hang onto that or them? Who knows? But we get to a point where keeping something seems to have become a habit and before we know it, life wouldn’t be the same if we no longer kept whatever it was. These things have to start somewhere I suppose, and then before you know it they have developed into a routine that becomes normal.
Cleaning the house at the moment without the wonderful help we usually have reminds us both that a) we don’t like doing it anymore now than we did when we started this lockdown and b) we are old and our bodies creak from cleaning c) we live in a very big house with lots of stuff.
Cleaning the gadgets and gizmos you acquire is one thing but thinking about why you don’t toss them in the bin is quite another.
I have been wearing the same perfume for years now, Moschino gold, the original before they branched out into dozens more fragrances. The packaging has been the same for all the years I have been buying it. A gold box which holds a nicely shaped glass spray bottle and a little ribbon that is the colour of the Italian flag. The connection with Italy is clear; Moschino is an Italian company. When a new bottle is required every four or five months or so, the package gets opened and the cardboard is placed carefully in the recycling bin, the cellophane goes in another bin, the old perfume bottle nestles in my lingerie drawer and the new glass bottle is placed on the shelf. But the little ribbon? For some reason, I have no idea why, I keep the ribbon. It sits on the perfume shelf in the bathroom and meets up with the other ribbons that I put there in previous months. From the collection I’ve acquired, I’d say I’ve been doing this for just over five years. Math has never been my best subject, but there are fourteen ribbons. (I’m sure my editor will sort out my maths as I often refer to him as both my calculator, and compass – what skills!) But why do I do this? I have absolutely no idea. Yet on every bathroom cleaning expedition during lockdown, (and there have been far, far too many of them!) I couldn’t bring myself to throw these little Italianate ribbons away. When I open a new bottle of perfume if I am in New Zealand, the ribbon goes straight into the bin along with the box and the other packaging. Here? Nope. It doesn’t feel right. And now it’s become like a little art work, an homage to Moschino.
Perhaps my journals will tell me what was going on in my life when this habit began. My shelf is filled with diaries and I see that I have been recording words and experiences for many years. Is that a form of hoarding? There are a few hints in those words, but I can’t share everything with you now can I?
I’m convinced I’m not alone in this harmless obsession (not the word hoarding but the ribbon collection). It would be good to understand the whys and wherefores, but I suspect that’s too much to ask.
I’m certain my time would be better spent thinking about the second wave of coronavirus that is bound to hit if somebody doesn’t sort out public transportation. Or perhaps I should worry about the fact that the police don’t seem to have powers to act on ensuring that the latest advice that the government has set out is adhered to. But then again…maybe not!
With love,
Kathy x