I love going to estate sales.

I love looking through books from long ago. I like to see juice glasses like the ones my grandma set on her breakfast table, and framed pictures like those people had in their homes when I was little.

Since we downsized, I’ve learned to admire these things without buying them, because we simply don’t have the space for them. If I should find something I absolutely must have, I’ve promised myself that some item I currently own will have to leave the house before the “new” (to me) item can come in. That’s the only way I can stay on top of my possessions and not let them get out of control, as I once did.

Recently I went to the estate sale of an elderly lady. It was held in her 1930s frame two-story house, and run by a group of tired-looking middle-age women that I assumed to be her daughters and/or daughters-in-law, because they kept referring to “Mom” in their conversations.

They had done a great job of setting up the sale, and what a job it was! All through the house were tables covered with tablecloths and neatly arranged items for sale. I could barely walk around the L-shaped living/dining room full of tables without bumping into someone or something. Every surface was covered with stuff.

There had to be at least five long tables of glass and ceramic figurines, all neatly arranged and shiny, as if someone had recently cleaned them (what a job!) Along one wall was a long display of costume jewelry, many pieces in their original boxes, all priced individually. There were also tables with lamps, glass and metal ashtrays (remember them?), wall plaques and artificial flower arrangements. There was no furniture except a few chairs for the sellers to sit on; the furniture must have already been distributed within the family or sold before the sale.

The kitchen was packed to the gills with dishes, pots, cooking utensils, and other kitchen items, many with mushrooms on them. Apparently “Mom” was into the 1970s mushroom craze and had amassed quite a collection of mushroom-decorated items.

The rest of the house was filled in a similar fashion, with various collections displayed neatly and price tags on each item. I can’t imagine how hard those women worked to get that sale ready. But I have to wonder how they really felt about all of Mom’s collections because no one seemed to be choosing many of those items, buying more useful things like lamps, yard tools and clothes instead. If they didn’t mark down Mom’s collections toward the end of the sale, they were likely left with the items and more decisions to make about what to do with them. Ugh!

I once had quite a few collections myself. When we downsized, I still liked my collections and didn’t want to give them up. I put off making decisions about them for a while (there were certainly plenty of other things to do at that busy time anyways) until it finally occurred to me that there is no law that you have to keep a collection together, and that if I was honest with myself, I really preferred some items in my collections over others. Hence it was OK to break up my collections.

Once I made that realization, I could finally do what I needed to do. I reduced my teapot collection from dozens down to three. I reduced my enormous collection of back issues of Country Living down to one small stack of clippings after committing to flipping through a few issues while on my exercise bike each night and tearing out anything I just had to keep. I did the same thing with my many quilt magazines, some of which had been published in the 1980s (!)

Both my husband and I have always been bookworms, so we had hundreds of books, maybe more than 1,000, counting paperbacks. We gave up about 2/3 of them.

I won’t list my other collections that were broken up; to be honest, I can’t even remember all of the stuff we got rid of! But I’m doing just fine without it, and someday when I die, my kids won’t have to go through all of it like that elderly lady’s family did for her estate sale.

I sure felt sorry for those gals.