Stories From Candyland (21 page)

I did get more careful about shopping lists. The next time we scheduled a trip to Costco, I decided we could halve the order of paper towels and toilet paper. I’m down to forty rolls of toilet paper and thirty-two rolls of paper towels. But half was still a lot.

I was also going to cut down on my order of dozens of bottles of window cleaner from the 99 Cents store, but I had read that the economy was hurting them. I didn’t want to harm their business, so I still bought many more bottles than were necessary. We stored (not hoarded) them.

After Oprah’s two-part show aired in November 2007, I became more conscious about how close I had come to being a card-carrying hoarder.

Knowing I would be moving to a smaller home someday
in the not-too-distant future, I made a deal with myself. For everything I brought into the house, I would get rid of twice as much.

I’ve just bought two T-shirts and donated seven to charity. (Surely, a true hoarder wouldn’t give away
three
more than she promised, right?)

I checked out my stash from my home-shopping days on QVC and HSN and donated everything I had never opened. That cleared out a fraction of a shelf of one closet.

My first collection was Madame Alexander dolls, and I still have my first Pierre Poodle. I’m now struggling with what to do with them (and my doll museum) when I move to smaller quarters. I have a collection of video and arcade games. (Anyone for a game of Ms. Pac-Man?) The bowling shoes (every size, for men, women, and children) will definitely stay with the house’s bowling alley.

Hoarders can’t move to smaller places, can they? Yet that’s my plan.

If I ever meet Oprah, I think I’ll let her decide. She’s nice. I’ll show her jewelry, not Beanie Babies; crystal, not condiments; and my light and breezy foyer.

I’ll take a picture of myself with Oprah and put it in one of my more than five hundred photo albums. No, scratch that. I don’t think I’ll mention my hundreds of books of photos to Oprah.

Alphonse Mucha advertising and beauty product posters

American and European Impressionist art

American and European Impressionist indoor and outdoor sculptures

American sterling peacocks

Antique Cartier clocks

Antique French golden bronze picture frames

Antique handkerchiefs

Automata

Bakelite jewelry

Ball clocks

Beanie Babies

Big Little Books

Blanc de Chine vases and objets d’art

Bronze match strikers

Bronze picture frames

Cabbage Patch Kids

Cachepots

China

Cookbooks

Couture books

Crystal

Cut crystal and antique candy dishes

Dinnerware

Dog paintings

Dresden butter pats

Erotic figurines

Etiquette books

Fabergé

Fine arts books on master jewelry designers

First-edition books (including Mark Twain)

Flower picture books

Gold presentation boxes

Herend hand-painted characters and figurines

Herend Rothschild Bird hand-painted china

Holiday decorations

Hors d’oeuvres plates

Lalique birds

Limoges boxes

Linens and doilies

Liquor decanters with silver overlays

Lorgnettes (opera glasses)

Mah-Jongg sets

Menu holders

Miniature fans

Miniature sewing machines

Music boxes

Perfume bottles with silver overlays

Photo albums

Place card holders

Porcelain and crystal butterflies

Royal Crown Derby figures

Silver and glass match strikers

Silver and porcelain swans

Silver birds and pheasants with movable wings

Silver salt cellars

Singing bird boxes

Snuff bottles

Sterling silver animals

Sterling silver band nodders

Steuben animals and collectibles

Sugar sifters

Table boxes (sewing, cigarette)

Themed salt-and-pepper shakers

Turtle soup dishes and matching spoons

Vienna bronze animals

Chapter 16
Up, Up, and Put Away

W
hen I first heard the Fifth Dimension singing Jimmy Webb’s “Up, Up, and Away” in 1967, I was in love with a man who refused to fly.

But I knew I could change him.

After all, I loved to travel and to fly, and I planned for us to travel all over the world and share once-in-a-lifetime experiences with each other.

Aaron Spelling traced his fear of flying to his service in the
Air Force during World War II. He was yanked from a flight two minutes before it took off because he was sick with the flu. That flight crashed, and everyone on board was killed. Since he was expected to be on the plane, the military notified his family that he had been killed. When he arrived home later that day, his mother saw him and fainted—and when she regained consciousness, she made him promise never to fly again.

But he was going to marry the girl who grew up watching (and falling in love with) the handsome character who was introduced with the words:

Look! Up in the sky!

It’s a bird.

It’s a plane.

It’s Superman!

I was dreaming of my Superman with whom I could soar to new heights of ecstasy.

A few months before Aaron and I got married, the Drifters hit the music charts with more high-flying lyrics in “Up on the Roof.”

Everything pointed to upward. Man was about to go to the moon. Aaron and I would ascend to new heights together, too.

But he never did break his promise to his mother. We
never flew anywhere together. We had some spectacular vacations, by car, train, and boat. And I’m not complaining.

It’s just that something had gone wrong with my scenario.

The highest we ever went together was our attic, and that’s far from romantic.

My attic was a well-kept family secret and a source of much laughter and eye-rolling between Aaron and me. Now that I have put my home on the market and am getting ready to move, I do have to go up, up, and away, and figure out what to do with everything that’s up there.

I hadn’t given it a lot of thought until one of the Realtors spotted a stairway going up from the second floor and wanted to know where it led.

“To the attic,” I mumbled.

“How big is the attic?” the Realtor asked—innocently, I’m sure. “Mumble, mumble, oh, about seventeen thousand, um, square feet.”

“Huh?”

And then we went up to the attic.

He was speechless. I thought it might be a little overwhelming to a first-timer. I go up there so often that it’s just routine for me.

Now it has become a math problem, and math’s not my favorite subject.

I have an attic that covers just over 17,000 square feet. I’m moving into a new condominium that will be a total of
17,000 square feet. My current living space is 56,500 square feet.

The arithmetic goes something like this: 17,000–(56,500+17,000)=much less space—and my having to get rid of an awful lot of possessions.

My attic is a source of amazement to the few people who had previously seen it. Much of what operates the house, from the heating and air-conditioning units to the mechanical lift that raises and lowers the chandelier in the entry hall, is housed in the attic. (I’m told that the lift was over-engineered so that it could raise and lower something as heavy as a Volkswagen, but I can’t imagine why I’d want to hang a VW in my entry hall.)

The attic, like the house, is shaped like a
W
. Originally, the house was going to be called L’Oiseau (“Bird”) but my French pronunciation isn’t that good, and we liked “The Manor” more. I never considered the name Tara, although I have a staircase that Scarlett O’Hara would have descended beautifully.

My doll-designing rooms are in the attic, and I store many dolls there that are not on display in my downstairs doll museum. I’ve got the fabrics from which I made their clothes, and the drawings, color swatches, paper samples for boxes, and everything else an efficient doll designer would need. There are probably some non-necessities, too, but once I’d found stands to hold doll wigs and doll-size hair blowers, how could I resist?

We also store lots of extra household supplies. There are lightbulbs—more than sixty-five varieties. (I don’t know how many light fixtures there are in The Manor, and I’m not going to count.) I know that sounds like a lot, but we have to keep them somewhere, and I never know when a dome light on the driveway, a reflector in the koi pool, or a custom light over a Renoir might need to be replaced. A quick trip to the attic handles all lighting needs.

I keep batteries adjacent to the lightbulbs. I guess there are hundreds of them, too, in all sizes and shapes and volts and expiration years. Name a volt, and we have it. The new owner of my house might laugh when he or she sees the battery and lightbulb collections, but I can guarantee they’ll thank me later. That doesn’t even include the rows of light panels that control the lighting throughout the house.

Do you know how much space it takes to store yards of extra carpet in a house such as mine? Think about that if you’re criticizing the size of my attic. There are carpet pads, too. Any idea of how many air-conditioning filters this house needs? I don’t know, either, but there are stacks and stacks of them.

There are fifty-nine boxes of Easter decorations. I have Easter eggs in different sizes and shapes from all the years different charity groups brought kids to The Manor for Easter egg hunts. I also have the bunny costumes (Easter, not Playboy) my kids wore to parties. Box 48 reads,
1 GIANT
E
ASTER BUNNY
. There are three boxes of new
VARIOUS FOILED
EGGS
and three more labeled
PAINTED WOODEN RABBITS
. Oops, I forgot about the pink grass, yellow grass, and green grass I bought for next year’s Easter baskets and those boxes of new baskets. Oh, look, box 59 has 2
RABBITS AT A TEA PARTY
.

I love holidays.

My boxes of Thanksgiving decorations include garlands for the various fireplaces in the house and Thanksgiving bears.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. My supplies include sound-activated jack-o’-lanterns, witches with caldrons, life-size (but not lifelike) ghosts and skeletons, beautifully carved artificial pumpkins, and even an animated spirit ball with a homely old lady who yells out threats to passersby.

There are
128 143 151 164 168
180 boxes of Christmas decorations.

I love Christmas. For years I’ve been collecting toy soldiers (130 at last count, including 4 seven-footers), wreaths, dogs in Santa suits, tree ornaments, festive dishes and glasses, Mrs. Claus dresses for dolls, cones, tree stands, lights, sheet music, fake snowflakes, elves, and sleighs. There are bears who sit on my front steps every Christmas, those who sit on the entry stairs, and bears who sit on coffee tables. I have pastry chef bears who adorn the kitchen during the holidays, and one who has a little cast on his front leg. (I imagine he went skiing during the holidays, so I keep him in my office, where I can keep an eye on him. I count on him to keep an eye out to make sure the garland for the left side of the staircase doesn’t
end up on the right side. He has a good eye.) You name it, and I have it.