During my writing hiatus I gave three black purses to Goodwill. Two of them leather (one too big,  one too small) and one canvas. All were purchased with the hope that this was going to be the purse to end my quest for  purse perfection.

Why is it so hard to find a good purse? It’s not like I’m going on “Let’s Make a Deal,”  or anything.  I don’t need to carry a measuring cup, a kazoo, a stapler, a red kerchief, a banana, or extra speaker wire in my bag. Monty is not going ask me to search through my portable storage unit for any of these things.  I’m quite the minimalist.  Here’s all I need to carry with me:

- One iPHONE (I used to need a book, but the iPHONE gives me the New York Times – what more do I need?)

- One wallet. I have a really small wallet that holds some cash and a few credit cards.

-One brush, I even hacked off the handle

- Spare glasses and a contact lens case because I keep  ripping lenses

- A pen and a few recipe cards to write on

- Keys to the car and the house

-A few aspirins, sudafeds, etc.

All I want is a bag that will hold these things with just a little room to spare. A bag that will hang gracefully from my shoulder and not get stuck in the car door.  A bag that reeks of elegance, that will look better in ten years than it does today, a bag that looks simple yet says and says “this is a woman of great intelligence and complexity.”

Why is it so hard? I keep buying bags. I buy them at Target, and at Goodwill and at Daytons/Marshall Fields/Macy’s. It can’t be that hard. But it is.  Every purse I’ve ever owned has let me down.

So now three fellow people in search of the perfect bag will find one one of mine at the University Avenue Goodwill. They’ll take it home with them thinking “this is the one!”

I hope the disappointment is not too bitter.

Too many things — dinner, books, spider solitaire — to name a few,  claim my time.

But I have been slowly going through stuff, both at home and at work, and I will continue to write about items I ditch until I reach 365 items. At my  current rate I’ll be stuck with this project for six years.  By then we’ll be on Web 7.0 and grade school students will ask “what’s a blog?” in the same way they now ask about vinyl  records, phones with a dial and milkmen.

So be it.

Today’s item (or more realistically this month’s item) is piles and piles  of  paperwork. I had a rare slow afternoon at work a few weeks ago and spent a few hours happily pitching files.

I tossed files from projects I worked on fifteen years ago.

I tossed  notes from articles I’d written for the employee newsletter more than ten years ago.

I tossed some stunningly bad photos – some of me, and some that I took of other people.

It was a nostalgic afternoon, but liberating, and I’ll do the same thing at home some day soon.

We bought this range as part of our kitchen remodel in 2005. Our kitchen was truly terrible—tired brown stuff everywhere–everything warped, tired and dirty.  The entire project was a case of  “as long as we are…” project creep.   But that’s another story. As part of the 2005 remodel we bought a shiny new stainless steel kitchen range, along with a refrigerator, dishwasher and range hood. We were so excited to have a bright red floor, nice clean cabinets (thank you Ikea!) and appliances that worked. We especially liked the looks of our stove. It was sleek and shiny and oh-so-cute.

We were so naïve.

You see, we believed that appliances should last. We were, we told the salesman, buying solid products that we knew would hold up. We declined the extended warranty.

Ha!

Within two years the control panel on the range stopped working. It was a slow death. First the timer conked out, and then the temperature control failed. For a while it worked if you whacked the front of the stove just right, but it was hit or miss and you had to whack it hard enough to risk injury. You had to whack it with the palm of your hand, not your fist, not a hammer, not a pan. It helped if you told it that it was a nice stove before you whacked it. Then for a while it worked on Tuesdays if you were wearing green and if you were happy with only baking things at 350 degrees, but that eliminated Brian’s legendary scones which require a solid 450 degree oven. Then one day out of the blue it became fully functional for a month or two and then, just as suddenly started to decline again.

We scoured the internet for solutions. We complained to the manufacturer to no avail, and finally gave in and spent $400 on a new control panel. Still cheaper than a new stove we reasoned.

We were so naïve.

We believed that the same part could not possibly fail again. The first time was just a fluke – bad luck.

Ha!

Yup. About a year the control panel failed again… same scenario only a much faster decline. We kissed another $400 goodbye, reasoning that it was still marginally cheaper than buying a new stove. We were blessed with a year and a half of a fully-functional stove. No whacking, no funny dances to the stove gods, no worries about the oven deserting you when you needed it most–like when you have house full of book club women waiting for baked cod.

Nirvana.

We were beyond naïve.

In the middle of the self-clean cycle (its first, I might add) the stove died. There was nothing slow about this death. No remissions, no rays of hope, no temporary sparks of life in the control panel— like the parrot in the old Monty Python skit, this stove was dead. The control panel was absent of even the tiniest glimmer of light, and the oven door was locked tight—stuck forever in self-clean mode.

We fought a little with the company with no satisfaction. They seemed to think it perfectly normal that the same part would fail THREE TIMES, finally offering us twenty percent off a replacement stove as if that was an offer so gracious that we should shout their praises from on high.

So we bought a new stove from a different manufacturer, and Monday morning Brian stayed home to great the new stove and wave goodbye to the old sorry excuse for a stove.

Our new stove is cute in its own way. It has bright blue lights and a warming drawer. It gives you a status report while it is pre-heating, and it has  a temperature probe.

It also has an extended warranty.

I bought this bottle perfume years ago—no decades ago—when I really could not afford it. I doubt It’s really perfume, more like Eau de Cologne or some similar cheap cousin. The description would have read something like “Shalimar by Guerlain is a legendary classic French perfume. Night blooming flowers, vanilla and mysterious musks are perfectly balanced in this sensual perfume that creates instant and lasting intrigue.” Sounds pretty good, and I’m sure at 22 I thought a little intrique would rock my world.

I just loved the smell, and I did find a guilty pleasure in buying something that was financially outside my reach. It felt ever so slightly naughty, and very grown up.

But in reality I’m not a perfume wearing kind of gal, and as time went on I started to know more and more people who are sensitive to chemical smells including perfumes. So I stopped wearing it and banished it to the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. It survived five moves and thirty years and several presidents. It is so old that that the spray pump is kind of rusty and the blue flowers on the case are faded. But it still has a little smell and I happily gave it to a friend who does still wear perfume. It reminds her of a much-loved friend of her Mother’s . It makes her happy and I’m happy for the space in the medicine cabinet.

I think that at least half the people my age I know had a bedspread exactly like this when they were growing up. I’m pretty sure it came from Sears or Montgomery Wards. It must be at least 40 years old and it reeks of nostalgia and camping and growing up. For several years I used it on the front porch couch, but it’s a sunny porch and over the years it has faded beyond recognition.

It’s polyester so it won’t make good rags, and we have a plethora of painting drop cloths and no more walls to paint, so I suppose this is headed for the landfill. Alas.

When I started this project I had very few rules—really only one: I was supposed to write creatively every day. I was not going to edit obsessively, or worry too much about style—the point was to simply WRITE. I actually have written a little every day, but a vacation and a frequently failing internet connection have prevented me from updating this blog. My minimal writing for the last three weeks is on little scraps of paper tucked here and there, or in e-mails I sent to myself from the road.

So here I am again… with a lot of catching up to do! Clearly my second goal of getting rid of 365 unneeded items is going to take me longer than a conventional year.

Today’s item is actually several.

On my vacation I ditched several clothing items I no longer need.

I started this habit years ago: When travel I bring clothing that is worn out, ever so slightly torn, stained, outdated or just not my style. I get one or two last wears out of it, and then leave it behind. Usually the clothing is not worthy of a second use, so it goes in the trash. (This may be marginally unethical, since the hotel then has to dispose of it, but I’m careful not to ditch too much in any one place.) I end up with space for new items in my suitcase and fewer dirty clothes to deal with when I come home.

So somewhere in a Lafayette, Louisiana landfill sits a tired brown turtleneck, and Pratteville, Alabama is the proud owner of a pair of olive green pants that I was very fond of until I spilled olive oil on them. In the TMI department, a couple pairs of torn underwear were left behind in Atlanta, Georgia and I ditched a pair of saggy socks I never did like in Texarkana, Texas.

Tomorrow I return to the discipline of cleaning out closets and drawers and writing and blogging. Promise.

I pick up murder mysteries at garage sales and Goodwill and from friends. I read them once and then they clutter the bookshelves and make it harder to find the things I do want to read again.

From now on murder mysteries and thrillers I’ve read will go immediately to the bookshelf and work, to a friend or to Goodwill.

But since I’m making up the rules as I go along, I’m declaring spices that I never use as fair game, and going through the spice shelf.

There are a few tins that I’m pretty sure I toted with me when I moved into this house — 18 years ago. Out they go!

And there are a few things that we just don’t use, most notably cumin, because they seem to disagree with one or both of us.

If I get rid of the old, tired, never used spices I might actually be able to find — and use — the things I do like.