Less is More

The purge continues. I've got 27 items listed on my ebay, not all of which have sold, but thank heavens for ebay's automatic relist thingey or I'd be trudging through that rigamarole again and again. I've also got some vintage perfumer's raw materials listed on my Etsy page. Yet, with all that's posted, it's nothing, a drop, compared to what's stacked under the work bench, in the closet, and languishing still in boxes in the garage. I've made little headway through the morass that is my broken perfumer's studio. I've had a few inquiries about what I'm doing, am I quitting the perfume business and whatnot. The answer is no. No, I'm not quitting. I'm reorganizing. I did it back in 2006 and 2007 (and  I was soundly  blasted online for it) when I took off a year from my shop to work with a collective to better learn perfumery before going ahead full force. I've been in the scent business since the 80's, and I've been collecting scent-related materials, collectibles, raw materials, and supplies, since the 90's, so you can imagine the loads of stuff I have that I haven't touched or used in years. Years. That's a long time to drag things around from house to house, keeping them because 'some day'. The only part of this collection of perfume-related paraphernalia that I am loathe to part with are the books. Some of them are irreplaceable, and I'm a book hound anyway, books of any subject tickle me to no end. To me, a book is a treasure chest. While it's been freeing to rid myself of the knick knacks of a perfumer's life, there is some small part of me that thinks, well, what if this is the end? What if I purge too much and can no longer do the work I so love doing? Then I remember, I started from scratch before, I can do it again if I have to. Plus now there is this advantage I have of not having to re-learn all the stuff that took me over a decade to learn about perfumery. And I'm keeping the bones of the work intact -- all the lab equipment, with the exception of the new gently used glass distillation unit I just purchased, I'm keeping. Plus all the new bottles I purchased to sell the perfumes in, I'm keeping those as well. It's insane that I have three plastic bins filled with varying types of perfume bottles and vials and tins and containers. I don't need them! I don't use them. I just drag them hither and yon, creating a mess of excess wherever I go. I've had enough. Plus I could use the money, and the space, and the peace of mind to proceed with the next step in this journey. My losses are potentially your gains.