Beyond Spring Cleaning: Confronting the Strange Magic of Personal Possessions

Many of us have been—or will be—called upon to clean out the home of a loved one or cull our own possessions when moving or downsizing. When the antique-dealer parents of writer and professor Julia Ridley Smith passed away, they left behind a house chock full of furniture, books, artifacts, and paper. Smith wrote about the huge task of going through it all in her first book The Sum of Trifles. Her thoughtful, tender, and often funny memoir explores the strange magic of objects, what they mean to us, and how hard it can be to let them go.

In this talk, Smith will share excerpts from her book, discuss how material culture shapes our identities, and how we often think of our possessions as defining who we are and even what we can do. She’ll talk about the challenges of tackling a house clean-out when grief makes it difficult to give up cherished objects. While the topic can feel heavy, she approaches it with humor, reminding us that there’s also room for finding joy, discovery, and human connection during a house clean-out.

After the talk, there will be an optional writing activity, with plenty of time for questions, discussion and a book signing (books available for purchase on-site)!