ANYTHING MORE THAN TWO IS A COLLECTION

Les says, "Anything more than two is a collection."

I often wonder why people have the compulsion to "collect". I didn't mean to start collecting the items in nearly any of the collections I have. When we moved to our house, the kitchen counters and floors were yellow and the wallpaper had strawberries in the pattern. I liked the mixture of reds and yellows.

Gerald's niece called and asked if I would like to have some strawberry kitchen items she'd received as a windfall from her brother-in-law's new girlfriend. She said, "They'll match your wallpaper!" I am not one to turn down anything free. When she brought the items, I was overjoyed to see there were McCoy items, as I already had a few McCoy dishes of my mother's, which I treasure. The strawberry plates which adorned the plate rail were immediately tranferred to the walls and the McCoy strawberry pitcher, casserole dishes, etc. were given the prominent place along the wall. I wondered why someone would give away such valuable items and our niece said the woman was "redecorating" and was just going to toss out the stuff. "Toss?", I asked, incredulously. I kept exclaiming, "Didn't she know what these are worth?" Thus started the strawberry collection. For years, I could count on receiving "something strawberry" as presents! Just this year, I received strawberry kitchen towels for my birthday. On the kitchen table, the centerpiece is a McCoy pitcher and bowl I received as a gift. In shopping one day I saw another, but smaller, McCoy pitcher and bowl, so now I have two pitcher and bowl sets on the kitchen table. I have no more room for anything strawberry!

My brother bought a Kitchen Aid mixer and I soon had "mixer envy"! I didn't NEED a mixer; in fact, the gleaming, chrome, Sunbeam Mixmaster and toaster I'd received as wedding presents had looked quite nice in the previous kitchen, but a RED Kitchen Aid mixer would look perfect, wouldn't it? Well, if one has one RED appliance, then certainly all the others should match, right? Thus, we have all RED Kitchen-Aid appliances: mixer, toaster, coffee pot, but dammit, Kitchen Aid doesn't make a stand-alone can opener, so I had to settle for a West Bend, which "almost" matches in color! Then I needed to have a red Fiesta canister set, right? Oh, those every-day dishes were really faded and chipped, right? Then I needed to have red Fiesta dishes, right? It is so easy to convince myself!

We love acronyms and I tell Gerald and Les to tell me NMS (NO MORE STUFF) when I am tempted to add to a collection!

I didn't need another strawberry cup, but I saw one at Goodwill yesterday, and it's now in the collection. NMS, Sue!