Today I packed my Slice of Life dish collection into the closet, and I feel I’ve packed part of myself away in the process.

It’s a very practical decision. I’m not using the dishes (they’re too valuable for everyday) and I have them stored in a pantry where I can’t see them. And I need the pantry space, so why not place the boxes on the floor of the closet and close the door on them?

But it’s like I’m closing the door myself. Those dishes, as stupid as it sounds, symbolize my thrift-store heritage, my love of beauty, and my ability to have and maintain friendships.

They must be pretty wonderful dishes to do all that.

I initially saw them at a swanky home goods store in Dallas (The Great Indoors), and pulled my mom across the store so she could admire them with me. At first glance the black-and-white plates and mugs looked very traditional, but on your second glance you’d notice a Roswell alien crash plate, or a plate featuring bumper cars, and suddenly you’d be pulled into another world, where nostalgia, myth and tradition mixed. A world where all the oddities of life were encircled by traditional black-and-white china-plate borders. Contained, accepted, and celebrated.

So I fell hard for this set. I couldn’t afford it — I was buying my first house, and there was no way I could meet the prices of this swanky store. I walked away.

My mom, however, knew I would regret this decision. She knew this was my pattern. When the swanky store threw a going-out-of-business sale she bought me one of every dish they had and gave them to me for Christmas. After some research we concluded the store didn’t have all the pieces, so the hunt was on! I spent about a decade trying to buy the missing pieces at affordable prices. One year I bought some at Macy’s for 50% off, and then one wondrous day I found a slew of pieces I’d never seen at rock-bottom prices on Amazon.com. I found a few pieces in thrift stores, including the San Francisco platter I thought was overpriced at $35, but which is now on Replacements.com for $235.  Mom found mugs at Tuesday Morning as recently as three years ago, once again including a new pattern I had no record of despite my decade-long hunt.

I’d always wanted to have mix-and-match china, so once I started completing the basic Slice of Life collection I branched out, looking for pieces from other manufacturers with the same feel, pieces like a Mona Lisa demitasse set, with Mona drinking from a tiny mug. A Leaning Tower of Pisa shaker designed for parmesan cheese. A Halloween bowl with skulls and crossbones.  I lusted after Fornasetti.

From Riveria Van Beers

As the photo at the top of the post shows, I kept my collection in two half-height metal Globe-Wernicke bookcases. One of the bookcases came with my house, and I bought a second on eBay so I’d have enough room to store it all. Eventually the tops of the bookcases were covered with solid black and solid white teapots.

I loved walking into the breakfast room, with all the dishes in place, cared for and displayed for all to see. I loved entertaining, and watching my guests pick a plate. And, of course, I loved the hunt, trying to track down the few elusive pieces needed to complete my collection.

But life changed. I packed the dishes away when I moved out-of-state, breaking my expeeeensive Brownstones mug in the process. The dishes lived in boxes in Mom’s guest bedroom until I moved back to an apartment in Texas.

And for the past three years they’ve lived in a closed-door pantry, shut away from my life.

Today I don’t shop much at thrift stores, even though I live in a neighborhood rife with them. The apartment doesn’t have room, and I don’t have money to be bringing home random bits of treasure I didn’t know I needed. My mom’s house, and my sisters’ homes to a lesser extent, are overflowing with stuff. I don’t want that for myself any longer. I owned three coffee tables, for heaven’s sake. Who needs three coffee tables? I loved it all, but today I want more editing, and less upkeep, and the ability to move without holding a garage sale first.

I don’t have a reason to set my table, either. I’ve never had many friends, but now I’m at an all-time low. I think an entire two people, aside from my family, has darkened my apartment’s threshold in three years. There isn’t anyone to share my dishes with.

And, most distressing of these trends, I don’t care much about how my apartment looks. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong, but it’s mostly an Ikea box. A small box, without excess floor space for special furniture to display dishes. It’s not like when I had a house and three coffee tables. Back then I was always dragging home new furniture, re-arranging, painting, organizing. Treasure-hunting. Heck, it took me two years to find a bed frame I liked.

But now I’ve lived for three years with pictures leaning up against walls because I’m not interested enough to hang them. There is so much I could do to make this space a warmer, more expressive, more welcoming place, but all my projects are still in shopping bags.

So life is changing, and I need pantry space for some kitchen gadgets, so my heart — I mean my dishes — are going into the closet. I’ll probably never buy the five Slice of Life pieces I’m missing. If I were really practical I would sell the set, but I can’t give up that much of my former life. I guess I’m afraid to look in the mirror and see Eleanor Rigby staring back, so I pretend the dishes will somehow save me. One day I’ll have friends again, and a lovely home, and I’ll need to pull these from storage to make everything whole again. For now, though, the dishes will sit alone in the dark.