I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

Someone recently told me that I'm a maximalist.

I like things.

My hundred-year-old house is full of books and records and artwork.

It's bright and colorful, more like a quirky collectible shop than a museum.

I'm sort of like a magpie, which also happens to have been my childhood nickname, because like

those birds, I collect things that catch my eye. In my home, I've run out of walls for artwork.

I've also, as you can imagine, run out of room for bookcases. I don't necessarily need more living

space. The house is small, but it's plenty large enough for myself and my two children.

What I could use is more display space for the things that give me pleasure when I see them.

I don't want my treasures tucked away in drawers behind cabinet doors or packed away in boxes. I want to see them daily. I want to be

reminded of where I found them, or who gave them to me, or what they mean to me. Don't get me

wrong. I don't hoard and clutter stresses me out. I love to get rid of things as much as,

if not more than, collecting. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to clean out my closet,

my bookshelves, and my attic, and to donate items I no longer need. It gives me a burst of energy, wind in my

sales. I'm only precious about things that are, well, precious. I can sell or donate a sofa or

table without a twinge of regret, but I would probably run into a burning

building for the Mother's Day cards my kids have made for me. I think of T.S. Eliot's concept of the

objective correlative, an object in a poem or story that represents an emotion. It's a kind of

imagistic shorthand. Many of the objects in my home, like objects in literature, are symbols.

They stand for things that have bigger, deeper meanings.

The books and records, the paintings and photographs, my children's drawings and stories,

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