In Love with France, At Home In Italy

Is "out with the old and in with the new" my new mantra? But what if I can put the old purse INSIDE the new one?  Here's how this dilemma arose. When my husband's sister came to visit, of course she wanted to check out the local stores. Like their cousin who, during her visit, had talked me into buying a new purse last year, Nan is another great shopper. Didn't I already tell you that that family has the shopping gene? Well, last year's new bag was the first to have been bought well before its predecessor (a perfectly serviceable LLBean number I had found hanging on hook in my home, clearly discarded by some wasteful member of my family), had disintegrated. It usually takes a purse's fatal flaw for me to decide to move on, and even then, it rarely moves COMPLETELY on and out--just up to the bursting attic where such things reside.  As beautiful as last year's new combo purse/mini backpack (henceforth referred to as ...

So what's all this? Read on and you'll see. The "tee-hee/boohoo" souvenir tissues from our Virgin Atlantic flight of many moons ago aptly describes my emotions during this painful rite-of-passage. Now who in her right mind would consider all this stuff inessential to everyday life and thus unworthy of taking up valuable real estate in her pocketbook? So many treasures here that are about to be exiled! Some people are "born" shoppers. They love the thrill of a new purchase. That would NOT be me. My favorite clothes--the soft, preowned, cozy ones I love to wear--all came from the recycling room at the Meredith, New Hampshire town dump. This was no ordinary dump. It was a state-of-the-art, model establishment of which even a summer resident could be proud. Way ahead of its time, the pristine Meredith dump had separate sections for each type of garbage. But for me, the highlight was the recycling room where the clothes bin had a special allure. It...