By: Tiana Dovetko
Photo Credit: Orange Circle
Antique shops are always something that interests me. I saw them as a quiet library of objects, with aisles and corners full of knick-knacks and old items someone no longer desired or needed. It’s almost like walking through someone’s cleared-out closet; the clothes and random items shoved into shoe boxes are all frozen in time on a shelf. People clean out and donate for a plethora of reasons; it can be as simple as just needing more space. Although other times it tends to be when there is no room for the past, or the past simply is no longer significant. People tend to give away what hurts to look at; the shelves become a placeholder for memories that were too heavy to carry. People clean out to make room for the “new” and “exciting” next parts of life, but what happens to the items left on a shelf of some random store, collecting dust?
A bunny plush with worn fur and an eye button loosely sewn on sits in the children’s section of a thrift store. The more you look at the bunny, the more it keeps showing its wear and tear. The multiple re-stitches done along the hem, one pink inner ear part is slightly faded compared to the other, and the tag on the back has no label from being washed over and over. Before it was a companion, sitting on a child’s bed every night, being the reassurance a child needs when the lights go out. This plush was hugged tightly during thunderstorms and earthquakes, and was even brought to show and tell multiple times. But eventually the child grew up, and didn’t need a friend to hold on long nights. Thus, once cleaning out their room to move onto their next big chapter, the bunny was placed in the box labeled “donations” with one final hug, the last hug the bunny would ever share with its original owner.
Over by the register, a snow globe sits quietly with a thin layer of dust caressing the surface of the circular glass. The flakes still swirl around the tiny city trapped inside the glass when picked up and lightly shaken. Before this could have been the souvenir a couple picked out on their honeymoon, or what a little child begged to have at the random gas station on a road trip to remember visiting Arizona. Tucked carefully into a suitcase as proof of a wonderful trip and as something to look back on and reminisce about the lush landscape on a vacation. Now the globe still snows when shaken, even if the trip that brought it home is long over.
A delicate teacup sits on a shelf, alongside other cups and mugs. The rim has a slight chip to the right of where the lace rim fades out from a baby blue to almost fully white, matching the ceramic base. Although the floral pattern is still radiant, with the roses and peonies lining the center with a branch and leaves. Perhaps at one point it was a grandmother’s favorite cup, a part of her set, who poured tea every morning as the sunlight entered through the French door, hearing the birds chirping. Maybe it heard her singing along to the radio, or conversations with her grandchildren sprinkled in with laughter and the soft clink of tea spoons swirling in sugar against the ceramic cup. Now it waits on a shelf, after hearing a surplus of stories, hoping someone will pour warm tea into it again and pick up where the conversation left off.
I always feel comforted in an antique store, as it feels like a museum of memories. How people let things go, and they all collect into one place. A plethora of things are donated on a day-to-day basis, for needing space or simply being unable to look at an item that holds a memory. Buying an item thrifted or from an antique store is not just simply saving money; it is giving an old item a new life. You do not simply just buy a vintage vase, but instead you are reigniting the life that vase had before you when you picked it up off a shelf. Showing how an object is not simply unworthy of use and meant to collect dust, but instead how its life never truly ends because it was tossed away, but rather now it is the perfect fit for someone else.
