A cold, drizzly day, perfect for tackling our carriage barn backlogged punch list. Tony is cleaning, sanding, staining, and basically transforming the dusty and neglected first floor back. Turning back the clock to the building’s stately horse and carriage days. And Glen is organizing, editing, curating, and emptying lots of *everything* that has collected over the last eighteen years. Intentional, methodical reorganization and elimination of nonessentials. As we distill the keepers from the let-it-go’s, I’m reminded of my January 7, 2024 post which drifted from what I might do differently into the riptide of overdue, challenging, but critical filtering. Essential? Or not? Glen and Tony have been catalyzing the slow-and-steady purge of unnecessaries, and I’m beginning to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
My years at Rosslyn have been a time of gathering, collecting, and curating… Accumulating possessions was perhaps inevitable. Furniture, art, decor. Toys and tools. Bikes, boats, tractor, Gator, and all sorts of property maintenance equipment. A startlingly expansive store of architectural salvage, lumber, and building materials.
Twice over the years we’ve hosted mega yard sales endeavoring to purge and re-home. In both cases we recirculated our unnecessaries and — all too temporarily — celebrated the edited, pared down, minimalism that resulted.
(Source: Do Differently)
This excerpt from that January reflection is especially relevant as we winnow the essential from the not essential in the carriage barn. It’s the last space the serve as a catch-all storage, workspace, and general repository of projects and artifacts awaiting their day. Eighteen years is a lot of time to tuck extra bits and pieces away for a someday project. And we’re finally undertaking the occasionally bittersweet work of deciding what we really need to keep, what we need to rehome, and what we need to dispose of once and for all.
I’m aware that… [I want/need to] downsize further. Acquire less and eliminate more.
I need to evaluate the minutia as much as the biggies. Essential or nonessential? Fundamental or filler? Additive or ready for recycling? Discretionary doo-dad? Let it go. Optional, outdated, or simply unused? Let it go!
(Source: Do Differently)
The bottles in the photographs accompanying today’s post are a few of the many antique liniment and liquor bottles we’ve discovered over the years while revitalizing Rosslyn’s four buildings (home, boathouse, icehouse, and carriage barn). Sometimes beautiful, sometimes simply intriguing, these artifacts gradually collected in the carriage barn.
I wanted to one day, some day do something meaningful with these bottles. Or find someone who could and would. So often this is the case. If I can’t, I want to find someone who can. Adaptive reuse has made a hoarder of me?!
And so today I’ve let them go. Glen will be re-homing some. Others will be recycled. And the windowsills will be clear…
What do you think?