Alas, decluttering just makes room for more clutter.
The author of “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” just died. How did she do?
Margareta Magnusson was an artist in Stockholm who wrote a bestselling book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.” Decluttering, the removal of unnecessary items from our living spaces, had already become an international obsession. That was doubly so for Americans, whose large houses became easy repositories for the cheap goods arriving by container ship from low-wage countries.
We declutterers had already gotten going 15 years ago, when Marie Kondo, Japan’s high priestess of neatness, came out with her big book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” I tried to copy Kondo’s orderly ways. Heaven knows, I tried.
Magnusson went a step further urging possession-burdened Westerners to raid their closets with Viking fervor. Her vision was a Super Bowl of downsizing, urging players to get rid of so many possessions, their heirs won’t have much cleanup when they’re gone.
Magnusson died recently, so how did she do? Not bad, according to reports, though short of perfection. Her attic was empty, but she had left an old bike in the cellar. Magnusson had kept shells she’d collected at the beach as a child, plus three ragged stuffed animals with cute names.
Sure, she’d given away her late husband’s massive tool collection. That was easy — as was shredding old bills. But that business of giving away 10 of her 16 plates because her table could only seat six sounded like mere stagecraft, a colorful detail to sell books.
I have lots of dinnerware, from crockery to fine china, some bought, most inherited. One item is an ancestral beanpot given to me by a long-departed Yankee in-law. I recall her growing incensed when I presented a great-granddaughter, then moving to Boston, with a new beanpot as a clever gift. In that matriarch’s honor, I’ve kept that old beanpot, cracked and laced with lead (though not used).
My sets of plates, teacups and soup tureens take up only one long shelf in the basement. When I’m gone, the clean-out crew can keep what they like and put the rest on eBay or the curb. They may even enjoy the treasure hunt.
Kondo’s mantra was to treat each item as a special, almost living thing, especially for clothes: Pick up a sweater and then ask yourself, in her words, does it “spark joy”? If not, out it goes.
I found “sparking joy” a high hurdle for most of my clothes to clear. I’d hold up a comfy worn bathrobe and think, “I like you well enough, but can’t say you make me do backflips.” Sadly, I’d given away a dress or two after concluding the garment didn’t make my heart soar, only to ask two years later, “Where is it?”
Another Kondo strategy I tried was to fold T-shirts into neat triangles, then store them vertically so you could see them all on opening the drawer. Aha. The origami approach worked, but, I regret to report, it made room for more T-shirts.
Decluttering influencers almost all advise automatically getting rid of any clothing item you haven’t worn in a year. I did some of that for a while, then gave up after being revisited with where-is-it regret.
An evening gown in the attic managed to evade several purges. Not only hadn’t I worn it in years, but the decades-old frock failed the spark-joy test. Then, when I was invited to a formal occasion, I tried on the dress and found it too big. Simple tailoring fixed the problem. I happily wore the gown to the gala. And on returning it to the third-floor closet, I held it up, whispering, “You spark joy.”
Reservations aside, I shall continue decluttering unto death. I just hope it’s in a sober state of mind.
AI cleans it up.
She left me with her kids at Morton Williams
Coffee area at Morton Williams
Iris Apfel forever
Iris Apfel returning to her Park Avenue apartment in 2019.
It’s hard to think that it’s been almost a year since Iris Apfel left us at age 102. She didn’t seem a candidate for death.
Starting Jan. 28, there will be an online auction of some of Iris’ clothes and objets at Chistie’s: Unapologetically Iris: The Collection of Iris Apfel.
They called Iris a “fashion icon” but her resemblance toTruman Capote’s tasteful swans was minimal except for an obsession with dress. No beige or greige outfits in her life.
Iris piled on a riot of textiles and jewelry and hats and belts and scarves and bags. The Metropolitan Museum of Art put on a fabulous show about her in 2005, and she became subject of an Albert Maysles documentary, Iris, in 2014. And from there a woman of fascination here and in Europe.
She says to Maysles’ camera: “There’s so much sameness. Everything is homogenized. I hate it.” After a pause she adds, “Whatever.” And off she goes covered in five(?) strands of big bead necklaces, bangles almost up to her elbows and in a tunic from a tribe, that she notes, comprised a Chinese minority. The tunic came with a hood that she didn’t like so she had it made into a collar.
Outside her condo in Palm Beach, you see Iris and her husband Carl waiting for a driver.
They were debating whose yogurt was sitting in the fridge, just like the loving old Jewish couple they were.
But a spacious and eccentric Park Avenue apartment was their natural habitat. The documentary has scenes of Iris walking through the grand-hotel lobby steadied by her cane.
At left is a picture of Iris coming in from the night in her finery. It was taken by one of the doormen who shared it with me. By the way, her skirt is part of the auction.
Are New York hospitals recruiting on Easter Island?
Photo: ThisEastSide
New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center can’t be knocked for quality of doctors, nurses or other medical providers. But its customer service borders on dismal.
First time I came to see a patient still in recovery after major surgery, the expressionless, charmless security officer at the visitor’s desk said “second floor” and nothing else. I was reminded of those stone heads on Easter Island but naively thought I had information enough. I found an elevator, which left me in a huge warren of long, poorly marked corridors, A, B, C, D and so on. I wandered around asking for the recovery room. The badged workers I accosted in the hallways tried to be helpful, but they had no idea. Finally, one suggested I go back to the visitor’s desk on the first floor and start all over.
I felt my way to an elevator going down and exited through the Emergency Room. OK. I went outside and walked back to the Main Entrance. I went to the visitors’ desk and demanded more details. Turned out, the patient was on the third floor, not the second, and this time I was given a corridor letter, G. I again wandered around corridor G, third floor but finally came upon the proper recovery room and visited a patient who wondered where I had been all this time.
Half hour waits just to get a visitor’s pass.
That night the patient was moved to a regular room. When I arrived the next day to take him home, the line at the visitor’s desk wound down the hall. There was only one officer at the desk, and it took half an hour to get to her. All we needed was a pass and a room number. I was not alone in my frustration.
New York hospitals, this one in particular, would do well to spend less money advertising for patients and more on basic customer service.
Finally, Congestion Pricing!
Here is the best explanation, and argument, for congestion pricing.
Below is a complaint in the front window of Sephora, on Lexington and 59th, one block into the zone.
We couldn’t disagree more!
Photo: Craig McLaughlin
Is Liberty Bagels that terrific?
We can’t help but note that every Sunday morning, and some other mornings, a long, long snake-of-a-line forms outside Liberty Bagels. The eatery is located on 58th Street between Madison and Fifth.
We asked a couple at the end of the line, “What is the reason for this line.” A German tourist observing the scene said she was also curious. The man answered, “It is a famous bagel store.”
I pointed out that there were a lot of bagel places nearby that they could walk right into. Didn’t matter.
Nothing against Liberty Bagel’s bagels. The place happens to be a few steps from the Apple Store, Central Park, hotels and other places tourists congregate. That, we guess, explains it.
Hochul is Misery
She couldn’t just honor the hard work city officials put in to ease the gridlock that has made pedestrian life in Midtown a misery. If it worked according to plan, congestion pricing would have reduced the number of vehicles passing below 60th Street while providing desperately needed funds for the subways.
But no. Hochul had to insert herself into a highly thought-out plan and muck it up. She “temporarily” froze its start planned for June. Most read the move as an effort to curry favor with New Yorkers in the suburb. The argument was that the $15 charge was a tax on drivers already paying stiff tolls on the bridges and tunnels to enter Manhattan. Funny, but despite those “stiff tolls,” Manhattan is perpetually clogged with traffic drawn to near standstills.
The video clip below shows what happens every single day. Note how the crosswalks are totally blocked while the “Walk” signs are lit. (Sometimes pedestrians can’t even see the walks signs due to blockage by by trucks.) Pedestrians having to squeeze between fenders to get across the street are a normal occurrence.
One of the dumber objections to congestion pricing was made by United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew. He held that congestion pricing was cooked up to benefit allegedly rich white Manhattanites at the expense of “people of color” elsewhere in the city. I suggest that Mulgrew compare the racial makeup of people driving cars in Midtown with that of the subway riders. By the way, only one in a hundred travelers into the congestion zone come via car.
The original congestion pricing plan was intended to provide the Metropolitan Transportation Authority with $15 billion in bonds to improve the city’s decrepit bus and subway system. The upgrades would have also created thousands of jobs.
And what about the psychic and physical costs gridlock forces on those crossing streets in Midtown? Could subjecting residents, shoppers and workers to this experience be good for business? Leading city-based business groups don’t think so. They have been backing congestion pricing, according to Politico.
Now Hochul has returned to the mess she created and given a green light for congestion pricing. She’s lowered the fee for cars to $9 a day from $15.
Had the original $15 fee gone into effect as previously planned, everyone would be used to it by now. If it did seem to hurt midtown businesses, the fee could have then been lowered.
And so congestion pricing should start early next month, just in time for the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term. Trump has vowed to kill the program. Good work, Kathy!
December tipping season is here
This year, as every year, we must confront the matter of tipping supers, doormen, cleaning people, waiters and dog walkers who have served us through the year. We know this is a subject of anxiety. What do you give? CityRealty offers good guidance. We do want to emphasize the importance of being generous, not forgetting that inflation has made life more expensive for all of us.
One of our correspondents, Craig McLaughlin, recalls a former life as a waiter at the 21 Club in the 1980s and the importance of tips.
“For a waiter, the money at 21 Club was exceptional,” Craig recalls, “But you had to move. You had to really work hard.” And the tips were phenomenal especially during the December holiday season. To the servers, Christmas tips represented both a pat on the back and an essential part of their pay package. The management figured them into the workers’ compensation.
The guy who ran the coatroom concession told Craig that he could make $50,000 in December, though the rest of the year the pay wasn’t great. “The doormen would also make a lot of money. Those guys were getting limousines for people,” Craig recalls.
“My first year there I was handed envelopes with ‘Craig’ written on front. The first one I opened was 200 bucks. I said, ‘Holy shit!’”
Adjusted for inflation, $200 in 1981 would equal more $655 in 2024 dollars. Corporate customers would give $400. The fancy people in the triple-A section would typically gave the waiters $150 or $200.
December tipping season is upon us: Time to raid the cash machines.
If you spill coffee on your keyboard at 3 a.m.
The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, between 58th and 59th, has become a major tourist destination, understandably so. It’s right across the street from the Plaza and near a main entrance to Central Park. You see lots of rolling luggage. You hear languages that, admittedly, could be heard elsewhere in the city but not necessarily in the same place.
We asked one of the salespeople, “Who comes here at 3 a.m., 4 a.m.?” That crowd is mostly New Yorkers, the Apple guy explains, night people who spilled coffee on their keyboards in the wee hours and need an emergency replacement.
According to Wikipedia, “The store is always open to customers, with no hours or days closed, an acknowledgement that after-hours New York is still going strong. It is the only Apple Store in the universe that is open 24/7.
Can we call a 34-year-old woman a ‘matron’?
The New York Times published a news item on December 9, 1946, about a “Park Avenue matron” who died suddenly. She was 34. Back in those days, “matron” was often paired with “Park Avenue.”
It connotes white glove, the right clubs, that sort of thing. And Mrs. Evelyn Morgan would seem to qualify.
Mrs. Morgan and her husband had apparently spent the evening at the Stork Club. Club goers back then tended not to hold back the drink, and it’s possible that a full night ending at 1:30 a.m., followed by sleeping pills to be not a healthy combination.
Starting as a speakeasy during Prohibition, the Stork Club was the place for celebrities, soignée socialites and other connected New Yorkers to be seen and talked about in the next day’s papers. It was there that Count Basie and Guy Lombardo performed with their orchestras.
“It was a shrine of sophistication in the minds of thousands who had never seen it, the fabric and pattern of legend,” wrote Lucius Beebe, a top-hatted bon-vivant who chronicled “high society” in mid-century Manhattan.
The Stork Club became victim of the go-go 60s. Dress codes had collapsed, and refinement had crumbled in an implosion of hippie slobdom. The swaying ballroom dancing of yore had morphed into couples free-form rocking on the clubs’ dance floor.
The original Stork Club closed in 1965 and the building was leveled. The site is now a Midtown pocket park, Paley Park.
As for the Morgans’ apartment at 277 Park Avenue, the building between 47th and 48th Streets was raised and is now an office tower.