Recently I spent several days on this porch of the building we call the “cottage”. No dog and no summer hat. I’m getting serious about “downsizing”. The porch has become my “loading dock”.
I’ve long been a “collector”. Others of you, especially quilters, will know the challenges of managing our collections.
However, my collections are overtaking our space. We plan to create a “tiny house” for our visitors. With this goal I’m embarking on what seems to be, at times, an “archaeological dig” composed of multiple layers of “debris”. I find myself sifting through it all deciding what to discard and what to keep with me.
Living in the country, you never know what you might need, so stuff accumulates. I’m finding that the hardest part about moving things on is my ongoing emotional connections and/or memories attached to various things. If I can find a “good home” for particular items, it is easier to let them go. Any ideas or suggestions you’d like to share? What’s worked for you?
This photo spans almost seventy years of my life. In the back row, the larger blue cardboard suitcase was mine on our family camping trips in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When my youngest sister, Lea turned four in 1956, our family of six began long summer vacations exploring distant locations in the US. Our two-tone Chevy station wagon with three rows of seats and no seat belts or air conditioning took us to twenty-two different states. These trips were part of the good years for my family.
My Girl Scout troop flew to the Girl Scout Cabana in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1962 during winter break of our senior year of high school. (We raised the money ourselves for the trip.) That flight on Pan American Airline was my first airplane flight. This humble suitcase went with me.
In 1968, a year after college, I applied to be a “flight hostess” for TWA. Because I was over the airline’s height limit of 5’9″, TWA flew me to Kansas city for a “special interview”. (The white woman who interviewed me said she could hire white women directly, but had to send anyone over the height limit, Black or Spanish-speaking to KC for this “special interview”.) This original interview was in Miami, Florida where I grew up. For this trip, I had new luggage–actually a set of luggage!

In 1968 these were the uniforms in bright colors that I eventually wore after being hired as a flight hostess.
TWA’s ad seeking flight hostess employees had read: Be A Woman of the World. A year earlier my parents had given me a four piece set of Samsonite luggage as a college graduation present. This extravagant gift had surprised and pleased me. The gift seemed to say I was a woman “going places”. When I flew to Kansas City, I packed my things in one of those “Biscayne Blue” Samsonite suitcases.

Inspect this vintage ad, circa 1965, for the Samsonite “Silhouette” luggage in Biscayne Blue like my set.–even the round “hat box”.
Once I was hired by TWA and finished the six weeks of training in Kansas City, I found that the luggage TWA expected us to use as part of our uniforms was the cream color version of the same Samsonite Silhouette luggage as seen in the above photo.
That cream colored suitcase was my constant companion for a decade. I lived out of my suitcase which became a connection to my active life at home. I packed needlework projects and later lots of feminist books to keep me occupied on layovers in cities around the country.
Early on, I got involved with our local flight attendant union as we worked for better wages and working conditions–like having meals provided by the company (as the pilots did) when we worked ten to twelve hour days. In 1973 I was part of starting the national group Stewardesses for Women’s Rights. Our goal was to support each other as we organized “to inform the public and other flight attendants about airline companies’ sexist advertisements, company discrimination, and airline health and safety hazards” like radioactive cargo carried in passenger aircraft.
Once I connected with the women of the Kansas City Women’s Liberation Union, I rarely traveled for pleasure. My life centered around our women’s center and the varied activities we organized.
That molded plastic suitcase became my traveling companion on a series of adventures I could not have imagined as a girl growing up on the edge of the Everglades. How can I discard it now?
How-to articles on downsizing often mention taking photos of treasured objects. I’ve done that. I’ve written this too, but will I then be able to part with these particular items? Stay tuned. Send me any advice or encouragement!
Postscript: Yes, I will be writing next about my October return trip to Crete, Greece. I did have a wonderful trip….
I enjoyed reading this and remembering those wonderful sturdy attractive samsonite
Suitcases.
So much more stylish than what we have today. But lighter weight and wheels are what we have traded for, and amazing zippers!
It’s all good!
Lila, thanks for your note. I understand that you had a set of the Samsonite Silhouette luggage too. You also got it while in college, but you bought it yourself and chose you chose the vibrant teal/turquoise color. Now, it is a “mid-century collectible” hopefully serving as a unique storage spot for a young woman artist with eclectic taste.