COLLECTIONS: TOTE BAG
When I was a kid I always had a designated “special drawer” where I kept small momentos, things I found on the forest floor, along the gravel road, or in my urban backyard - drawings, cards, etc. This morphed into shoeboxes when I got older, decorating the insides with collages cut out of Spin magazine, thrift store post cards, and old family photos. They’re filled with love notes, breakup notes, journals, snail mail, mix tape covers, scraps of old clothing, natural objects, old work name tags.. I still have a pile of these boxes stuffed in an age- old army surplus bag somewhere in my basement.
When my own two kids were little we had drawers and boxes for their shell collection, the bottle cap collection, rock collection, mosses, beads, sticks, art..
When we read the “Thing Finders” chapter in Pippi Longstocking it felt like we had found a kindred spirit, or rather that she had found us. Sweet relief, to be found - by Pippi.
We had a family monthly zine called The High Horse for a couple years - us and the kids plus neighbors and friends would contribute. We had sections (columns?) for jokes, midnight snack recipes, comics, art, and anything else we or someone else wanted to dream up. One of my favorite sections was titled COLLECTIONS. My first contribution to this section was a collection of my favorite made up shapes.
While in kindergarten, my youngest child built a museum exhibit in her room. Using an assortment of drawers and surfaces, she meticulously arranged and labeled her most precious found rocks, fossils, sticks, mosses, and bones then carefully stretched saran wrap over them in place of museum glass, then roped off her room with twine and appropriate signage.
When we learned about Cabinets of Curiosities as precursors to modern museums, we were all delighted. We felt we knew about collecting, that this process was natural and innate. Again, we were found.
The point is that I’m intrigued by the community of objects and the process by which they find each other and grow into collections - things that are precious or the things we term essential - and the random, uncategorical objects that find their ways into them. What’s really in the silverware drawer, or the sewing box, or the car console?
What’s in my tote bag on a given day? It always seems like a bottomless, mary poppins-like situation. I feel like I’m digging for treasure every time I go for my chapstick or a stick of gum. Its always while driving - one hand feverishly feeling around the single compartment bag in the passenger seat, the other on the wheel.
The chorus from Shel Silverstein's Poem, What’s In The Sack, reverberates in my mind when searching my tote -
What's in the sack?
What’s in the sack?
It remains a somewhat sinister mystery in the poem - I’m remembering the illustration as having a child’s hand randomly protruding from the bottom of a lumpy sack thrice the size of and heavily weighing over the shoulder of a nimble Rumpelstiltskin looking character.
The most desperate moment emerges when I’m led to ask myself if I left the object in pursuit in another tote bag - just seconds before finally grasping the thing. Phew. Found.
For whatever reason (spring, maybe) I am compelled to document such collections again. The tote bag seems as good a place to begin as any.
The images shared here are an inventory of items found in my tote bag on Monday, March 2nd, 2026.
While I have some rough hopes and ideas, I’m not quite sure how this practice of documentation will unfold. Regardless, I’m having a good time and feeling productive.
More Soon.
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