Madeline
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“What I think I learned from the crash, and from some of my clients who are owned by their things, is that it is a ridiculous way of life,” Ms. Fierman says. “We did a job once because a contractor in an adjacent apartment had caused dust in a woman’s Park Avenue apartment. When she opened the door, she greeted us with the sentence, ‘Everything in this apartment is photographed, right down to the Coca-Cola bottles.’ She was basically telling my workers, ‘Don’t dare steal anything.’ She was owned by her things; she was so afraid that she cut the cleaning day short.”
Today, Ms. Fierman’s daughter, Sabrina, helps her run the business. Ms. Fierman is also creating a new life in Sayulita, a Mexican town not far from Puerto Vallarta, where she has been buying and developing rental property.
When you live in a small community and you try to make a change, you can actually see the impact of your work, she says. Her contribution is buying flea collars for the stray dogs.
“It has taken me years to really realize items are not worth worrying about,” Ms. Fierman says.
What is worth worrying about?
“People doing good things on this earth, leaving the world a better place. It doesn’t matter what you do — if you do for cats, fine; if you do for Uganda, fine; if you do for trees,” she says. But “everybody owes it to the world to make it a little bit better.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/garden/25clean.html?pagewanted=1
When I was newly married, I visited my in-laws at their home and watched a truely horrifying scene unfold. My FIL had a collection of slides he had piled precariously high in stacks on a tv tray -- clearly days of work, but foolishly fragile. My nephew, who was six, bumped the table and the slides went everywhere. My FIL flew into a rage that has prolly stayed with that child, and has certainly stayed with me -- I was actually afraid for the little boy's safety for a long moment.
We all have stuff we love, stuff we dun love but need and stuff we want -- but do you own your stuff or does it own you?
I'm not ready for bare walls and books I throw away after I read them, but I am finally free of such lunacy as the 20 years' worth of collected frog figurines.
Your thoughts?
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