True Confessions

I am trying, I really am. I actually opened the door (you will be happy to know nothing fell on me) to the hall closet. I stood there, overwhelmed, and just couldn’t go any further. I am dumbstruck by the enormity of this project. I took out one thing. Oddly, a pink Easter-bunny costume belonging to Muffy Vanderbear was front and center, on top of the pile in the middle of the floor. So Miss Muffy’s pink bunny costume is now where it belongs, in the top of Daughter #2’s closet with the rest of the Muffy Vanderbear collection. I dare say I have, ahem – I mean Daughter #2 has a several thousand dollar collection of Muffy Vanderbear collectibles.

Which brings up one of my crazy addictions and one of the reasons I cannot delve into the hall closet purging project; I get totally sucked into every fad, craze, collectible that is known to man (or woman). You name it, I have probably collected it. Or worse, I have probably collected under the pretense of collecting it for my daughters. (Oh, horrors, I can’t believe I am admitting to this – must be that second glass of wine it took to get up the nerve to open the closet door.)

Let’s blame it on Barbie; that grotesquely proportioned doll that no self-respecting feminist (me) should have ever brought home to her little girl. But bring her home I did, boy did I bring her home. Daughter #1 owns every limited edition Christmas Barbie there ever was. They were never taken out of the boxes. For a while they were prominently displayed on a specially built shelf around the top of her wall, but now they are packed away – somewhere in my house. Not in the dreaded hall closet, but in some other yet to be purged closet in this house. Why are we saving them? I can pass the buck and say they don’t belong to me, therefore they are not mine to dispose of; they may also be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. (That is something all of us pack-rats tell ourselves on a regular basis.)

Not to be outdone by the Barbie collection, Daughter #2 has the Muffy Vanderbear collection. We, I mean she, owns every limited edition Christmas Muffy Vanderbear there ever was. In her late teens she finally asked me, nicely, to stop buying them. Not only do we own all of the boxed Christmas Muffys, we own costumes, furniture and accessories for Muffy. I think we also own some of her friends. This is a sickness I tell you!

Now, for the worst, truest, most shaming confession: I, I mean my daughter, oh, hell, who am I kidding – I own a trunk full of (drum roll, please) Beanie Babies. I spent thousands of dollars collecting Beanie Babies. I spent upwards of one hundred dollars on some of the rarer Beanie Babies – like the purple Princess Di Beanie Baby. Oh, please – it is just a friggin’ stuffed animal, yet I got caught up in the frenzy and drove to the special Beanie Baby store every day to see if a new shipment had come in. What a racket! My Beanie Baby collection has depreciated faster than my stock portfolio.

So now I am living in a house with hundreds of Barbies, Muffy Vanderbears, and Beanie Babies. What to do, what to do? I do have a garage sale coming up. Perish the thought.