CLEANING OUT COLLECTIBLES THAT HAVE LOST THEIR CHARM

Cleaning out collectibles that have lost their charm

Last Friday night I came home, opened the refrigerator to get a snack and noticed the light didn't turn on. Burnt-out bulb? So I looked in the freezer. No light. So at 9 p.m., I called an 800 number and booked a repair for Monday. Why do appliances always die on Fridays? Are the poltergeists of the world hard at work? I decided to clean our garage freezer, put the good stuff from our kitchen freezer there, and throw out lots of things that were old or not among our favorites. Two trash cans later, we had plenty of space to store the frozen food, and the perishables from the fridge were in coolers. We also found some great desserts, a few homemade meals, and a container of our favorite homemade orange and cranberry Thanksgiving relish. (In between times, I kept running to see the Olympics on television so I wouldn't miss Michael Phelps' gold medals.)

All of this led us to wonder what it would take to clean out the shelves and boxes of our collectibles that have lost their charm. So that job is on our list. We are going to start with the garage storage cabinets and sort everything into three main categories: "save," "donate" and "dump." In the process, we will certainly find forgotten treasures. Then, just as we did with the contents of our freezer (ice cream here, meat there), we will sort our collectibles into more specific categories.

Bookends and Depression glass, lady head planters and vinegar cruets will at last each have a single spot on a shelf. We can get a real inventory and stop searching every shelf when we want something. Schedule a cleaning. You may be surprised to find that many of the things at the back of your shelves are now much more popular--and might even make it into the living room.