Death by Accessories

Death by Chocolate Accessories -  Too much of a good thing can be bad sometimes.  All summer I've been noticing all my accessories and not in a good way.  Don't get me wrong - I hate homes where you walk in and there's nothing personal anywhere in sight.  However, scattered personal trivia everywhere isn't good either.

Advice I've gathered over the years about dealing with accessories gone wild:

1. Gather all your accessories and put them all in one place.
2. Remove the ones that no longer appeal to you - you don't like them or they aren't special anymore.  (Give them away or box them up if you really can't part with them yet.)
3. Sort and group similar items.
4. If you found you've kept a lot, see if you can rotate them through in a more seasonal way.  For example, accessories you'll have out in fall and winter to be replaced by those designated for spring and summer.
5. Wait a few days and live with your space without the accessories.
6. Now, decide what parts of your home would benefit from these personal touches - displaying items in groups for more impact and keeping in mind the need for furniture to be functional.  Who wants to have move six things from a side table before being able to set down a drink.
7. Re-accessorize and critique.  
8. Don't let things get stale.  Consider rearranging more often to keep things fresh.
9. Buy a cottage to display all the other stuff you didn't get rid of

Now, here's a review of what I've accumulated - along with some commentary from my husband after he saw me working on this post.

Look 4 crabs - a brass one, a red one, a matchbox one and even one preserved in plastic!   Concrete books, a clam, a scallop, a pineapple and a Santa gnome glued on an old Jif peanut butter lid. Oh, and an empty bottle of bay rum cologne...I liked the wicker packaging.

3 brass clams , 3 moss balls and a faux boxwood atop fluted zinc.  Pottery, books, old telephone insulators and a clam filled with 2011's harvest of lavender from the garden.  What made me think that was a good idea?

My husband - Hey, what about all those styrofoam balls you bought to make into moss balls?
Me - They don't qualify as an accessory yet...they aren't finished.

What didn't I put on the table?  Mostly things that were on shelves - lots of coral, a chipped Waterford bud vase and lucite book ends.  These will still be part of the process but I basically ran out of room on the table.  (p.s. - Anything made by my kids, like the plaster handprints, will of course stay but I'm going to think of a better way to display them. Also, I now only buy faux coral since buying harvested coral isn't good for the oceans.)

Husband - "Hey world, FYI, this is only a partial portion of the trinkets she owns."  

Me -            No, really, I think it's mostly all out there.

Husband -  What about the vintage slide rule, the horseshoe crab shells, the iron owls, the cigar boxes?    Do I need to go on?

Anyway, I hope to update in the next few weeks the results of my purge and re-distribution.

By the way, how's the home accessories situation at your house?