Cleaning out my office, I've thought about what William Morris so wisely said: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Intellectually, I subscribe heartily to the wisdom of that statement. Nevertheless, I've got piles of stuff that is useless and is ugly and which I'm loath to part with. I'd make a lousy Pre-Raphaelite.
Do I need the wind-up luggage? (Yes, wind-up luggage. I got it free with an Archie McPhee order, the rest of which I'm sure was every bit as practical.) No, I do not need the wind-up luggage. But maybe there is room for the entertaining as well as the beautiful. Home it goes.
Do I need the brick fragments in my desk? They are unlovely and impractical, like the building they were part of. I will hold on to my little relics of DesPlaces Hall, always.
Do I need the wire basket that used to contain Christmas goodies from a vendor? Uh... no! Finally, something to abandon!
I don't have the choice of bringing my giant old desk, a hulking green-painted steel lump of fallout-shelter chic. They don't make 'em like this anymore, for a reason. I'll miss it. I'll get over it.
I find myself unable to bear the thought of bringing home my radio. The wrong voices coming out of a familiar body... no. The radio will stay.
The Pittsburgh Snark Channel
