When we were clearing the decks, so to speak, before we did all the work upstairs, one thing we had to do was remove my sewing cabinet from the wall. Are you old enough to remember Fibber McGee’s Closet? Well, let me tell you – I ended up filling a “Xerox Box” with the contents of that cabinet. Buttons, spools of thread, packets of pins, bobbins, and Heaven only knows what all else came out of that thing.
It’s been rainy all day today, so the dog and I sat on the guest bed box spring and sorted stuff. Most of my thread had dry rotted on the spools. I mean, who else do you know who still has wooden spools in her sewing cabinet? I pulled off a few feet of thread, and if I could snap it between the thumb and forefinger of both hands, it went into the trash. I now own a dozen empty bobbins and six spools of thread. And a trash can full of what I am sure my mum would consider perfectly good thread.
I found a packet of needles sold by Food Fair, a grocery chain that went out of business
old stuff – sideways, for some odd reason
about 1965 or so. I unearthed a half-dozen hat pins; not dinky little corsage pins, but gen-you-ine five inch hat pins. They must have belonged to my great-grandmother. Elastic that has lost its spring, a sewing kit from a moving company that went under before I graduated from high school; it is so old it has little cardboard sticks with glue on them that you moistened and applied to a runner in your stockings. A set of sew-on replacement pockets for men’s trousers – priced 80 cents. A pair of shoulder straps for a lady’s slip, probably from before WWII, judging from the picture. And, oddly enough, three tiny, tiny crochet hooks. I neither knit nor crochet, and these seem small enough to make sweaters for the fairies. I can’t imagine actually using them for anything larger.
Dear Heaven, where does this stuff come from?
Anyway, my sewing cabinet is now all neat and tidy, and I am sure it will stay that way for, oh, at least the first of May.
thisendoftheswamp 
Would there be a bit of genetics to hoarding? At least you have not unearthed boxes of dirt.
Oh, absolutely genetic – no matter how hard I try.