A Century's worth of stuff

Yesterday was a pretty trying day. A day of errands, haircuts, grocery shopping, and a trip to Ikea. We are re-decorating our bedroom and it is not an easy feat! As Mario, and I are both collectors? (Or,pack rats? Or, he's a pack rat and I'm a clothes horse?) In any case there is just too much stuff in one little space for two people. Step one: before even starting to put together our wardrobe system, we had to go through our accumulated belongings and get rid of stuff we no longer have any want or need of. This is so much easier said than done!

I noticed that we had so so so so many books and magazines and those take up a lot of room! I am seriously seeing the upside of a Kindle or I-pad, as much as I love books I have to rethink buying them, unless it is one I really love and know I'll keep coming back to- I really need to use the library much more than I do.

I think many of the books I bought for my undergraduate classes will be heading off to the goodwill today as well as old bags (unless anyone out there wants a well-worn Givenchy or Dior handbag) and boots and clothes I no longer wear. I still have things I wore back in junior high school piled up in my closet - I don't even know why I dragged those things with me all the way from Massachusetts when I moved. Do I really need platform converse sneakers? Or, a Spice Girls lunch box (which I totally bought to be ironic by the way!) *sigh* too much stuff!

There are some good things about this type of, oh let's call it spring cleaning, you do re-discover things that may have been put off on a shelf. And, these discoveries can be a good source of inspiration.

I found this little gem:

Century Girl:100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies, it is a beautiful collage-art biography of the life of Doris Eaton. My sister gave me this book some years back as a Birthday gift, and while I paused to look through it I decided I wanted to create springtime outfits evocative of the Ziegfeld Follie girls-delicate dance wear and lingerie inspired clothes.

Here are some other Ziegfeld girl photos from the interwebs.

Seeing Pictures of Louise Brooks, always makes me want

to cut my hair short again.