01/08/2025
As I frown upon the boxes of things I squirreled upstairs into the Bella Villa Antiques & Vintage Rentals Stash, a part of me wishes I had seen this post a couple weeks ago. Then again, there’s nothing like the joy I feel when a client asks me if I have a particular thing because they’d rather use one already in existence than buy a new whatever it is on what I’m now calling insta-way-zon.
What are you Midlifers not carrying into 2025?
For me, it’s what every woman wants to shed:
Glassware.
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE pieces of glassware, to be exact.
And counting. Because I haven’t even made it through the bottom row of cabinets in my kitchen yet.
How does one, a few short years shy of 50, collect so much glassware you ask?
Good question. It’s unclear.
I do not thrift or collect this stuff. I haven’t used most of these pieces in a dozen years or, in some cases, ever. I don’t even know the origin of some of these items.
They just…appeared. And proceeded to collect dust.
But once I hauled all of this extemporaneous glassware out of the back of the high kitchen cabinets, I texted pictures of all it to my mother to ensure I wasn’t going to be selling or donating some expensive part of my heritage that I’m too Gen X to recognize.
She and I concur that I have parts of sets of generic Baptist reception punch cups and dessert plates courtesy of both of my late grandmothers, because I married a Baptist.
So, obviously I needed eighty-two teacups.
I come from a long line of Baptists, friends. Long live the Baptist reception ladies. They’re hands down the most redeeming part of the current Baptist tradition, in my humble opinion.
I have cake stands, multiple sets of tiny juice glasses (just why? who drinks 4 sips and 4 sips only as a family?) and apparently every glass vase I’ve ever put a single flower in over the course of our 25 year marriage.
And I’m not taking any of it with me into the second half.
Nope.
I don’t need a singular hollow candlestick in an awkward ph***ic shape.
I don’t need a beveled pitcher that holds less than a pint of anything. Or a single decorative bowl featuring a painted rabbit. Or stemware made specifically for after-dinner sherry in the year of Our Lord 2025.
And I definitely don’t need unmatched opaque martini glasses because, if it’s dirty, I want to see it already, thank you very much.
Anyway, future Whitney thanks me for this impossibly tedious chore because she will never take down, dust, pack, unpack, wash and reshelve these TEN DOZEN impractical items again over the course of her natural life.
Who is she kidding? She never even took them down the first time to dust.
Instead, and because sometimes the internet is amazing when you’re trying to reHome stuff, a set of mugs is going to a neighbor just in time for hot chocolate season. And a cake-stand is going to a new home that belongs to a baker. And, get this, a bunch of textured punch glasses and dessert plates are going to an art therapist who will turn them into candles and flowers, respectively, for their next lives.
My beloved Midlife tribe, what are you not carrying into 2025?
Is it also the glassware that magically appeared in your cabinets over the years? The ratty sheets and towels that I swear multiply behind closed closet doors? Or is it the dutifully filed-away papers you haven’t parted with because you sleep well at night knowing you can produce a receipt from a 2016 expense?
It’s time to unload some things for a lighter 2025, Midlifers. I promise, we don’t need the dusty stuff for a brighter, lighter second half.
And, for the uncertain among you who wonder if you really can part with that pickle jar that was regifted to you in your bridal/baby/whatever-shower-era, please know that this post is Baptist lady approved.
Now get busy.
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