Archive for August, 2010

Declutter, my arse    

Here’s a task you can try, to help you declutter your clothes:

1.  From memory, write down a list of all the clothes you own.

2.  Compare this with your wardrobe.

3.  Now throw out everything you forgot to write down.

This is the kind of madness you can read in some of the “How to Declutter” articles and websites. The idea is that if you have things which you can’t recall then you must not need them. But I can barely remember my height, weight, or who owns what in the flat where I live, let alone all the clothes I own.

Because of my need to gather stock for the Help Me! Help Me! shop, I have been trying to change my attitude towards decluttering, and do it more often. It is becoming a bit of a game: what can I let go of this week that I wouldn’t last week?

I was decluttering in my flat recently and picked out a few of my wineglasses to give away. I thought I would offer them to my flatmate first in case she wanted them. She is Estonian and her English is excellent but sometimes she gets muddled and uses English in strange ways. She talks about the good police person, bad police person, and when I laugh she warns me not to “sell her for comedy”.

This time she was definite and coherent. “Priscilla” she said, “I know you do not like this glass, but it belongs to me and I would like it if you would not declutter my things.”

As well as finding a venue – which people keep telling me is important – there are a hundred small shop tasks I could happily drown in, like making handmade tags. I’ve been collecting (hoarding) these ribbons for years and they are coming in handy now that I am assembling the tags.
I’m not sure exactly what I will do with them, and so the Theme of Uncertainty continues to run headlong through this project…

I discovered that small loaves of sliced pan bread in Ireland often come with a piece of card at one end, I guess to keep the bread in shape? The card is a perfect, size for labels so I emailed some friends asking if they’d collect them for me. Strangely it seems that few of my friends eat this kind of bread… most of them eat artisan loaves or they make their own bread, and one family only eats pitta bread, with everything including jam!

Some people thought I wanted them to post the actual last slice of bread in the pan. So much for clarity.  My family always called that piece the “heel”, someone wrote and told me that hers calls them “Knoskis”.

Quite a few wanted to give me advice or send other types of cardboard which I found comforting but confusing:

“is the bread element part of it?? can’t you go the council and get loads of recycled stuff for free. or is this part of the art…. do you know the artist who ate his body shape through a huge massive mound of bread… rather beautiful and also an interesting way of pushing the notion of an elegant sufficiency to the edge of its boundaries…”

“I ONLY eat spelt bread from the farmer’s market: you’ll have to find less ‘high end’ friends for your project”…

“I do…have a spare room that is almost (except for an unpacked tent and a bike) all dedicated to unused (but hopefully useful in the future) cardboard. most of it is too cardboard-ie for your use i imagine…. does it have to be plain coloured on both sides? cos i have some pizza boxes and porridge boxes but only plain on one side…..”

I started to feel like I was swimming in the details of other people’s minds and got a bit worried about the future of the sliced pan.

I still haven’t received any cardboard in the post!

I am looking for a home for my shop in the Dublin Fringe Festival. It would be great to get somewhere in Dublin city centre, around Georges Street, Parliament Street or Capel Street. There seem to be quite a lot of empty shops in Dublin at the moment but letting agencies don’t want to say yes yet, in case they get a better offer… If you have any Dublin landlords in your family, with a suitable space, please get in touch! You can mail me at helpme@helpmehelpme.com

There was a possible venue, opposite this wall sign (over a pub off Bolton Street) which I love! The space was great but it was a bit too far out of town, and there were no tea making facilities. We did think of doing a deal with the pub, and letting them provide the tea, coffee & wine.

I got inspired by my visit to a flea market in Brussels, where the sellers put out hundreds of boxes full of random objects mixed up together and let people rummage through them – usually without asking you to hurry up or coaxing you to buy!

I started to hear about other places that I could visit – like the Dog Charity Shop in Machynlleth in Wales where everything is 50p, Raeburn Place in Edinburgh – a street where charity shops outnumber “normal” shops, a 630 mile long yard sale in Alabama, one of the biggest flea markets in the world in Bonn, and my favourite (from Lian Bell, ABSOLUT Fringe Programme Manager) an Animals in Distress charity shop in Minehead, England that was crammed full of things, and very chaotic. An old lady was sitting at the counter crocheting tea-cosies to sell, and the shop was organised as if it were a giant tombola. Everything there had a coloured raffle ticket cellotaped to it and when you paid 50p you could “win” one of the items, but then you had to find it.

I read about the thrifters in New York City who wear body suits under their clothes in case they have to try things on in the aisles. I found out about a woman with over 500 pairs of shoes – many of them found in thrift shops – and an assistant who catalogues them for her. I read about a shop that raises money to find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes. On Wednesdays Type 1 diabetics get a 15% discount: “Just show us your medical chart, pump, or other diabetes paraphernalia.”

You can see some of the places I got to, in Journey and I hope to put up a Diary there soon.

 I’ve always wanted to work in a charity shop. I decided to take this wish a bit further, and open my own one. It’s going to be called Help Me! Help Me!

In the Help Me! Help Me! shop I will be getting rid of lots of my things, some of which I have tried to give away before but changed my mind. I don’t like asking for help and I hate letting stuff go. You can get sick of the facts about yourself, so I’m taking action by making these problems the heart of this project.

In Treasure you can see some photos I have been taking of the things: apparently one of the reasons why we hoard stuff is that we are afraid we won’t remember what it looks like when it is gone.