What's on my trinket shelf

a tour of all my little things

I grew up in the time of YouTube beauty gurus and flat lays, I’m a child of the golden era of What’s In My Bag. I am extremely nosy, and you can learn so much about a person by what they carry with them! A trinket shelf is sort of the same, a display of the things a person has collected over time. This newsletter is named trinket shelf because it’s sort of like a junk drawer, but for things that you want to show off instead of hide away. It’s curated but not, it’s a living breathing entity that reflects my life as I live it. 

My trinket shelf doubles as a bookshelf and is the piece de resistance of my bedroom. I don’t believe in organizing books by color and don’t have the focus to organize them alphabetically or by genre, so they’re not organized. On and around the books are things I’ve collected and the memories attached to them. So without further ado, here’s what’s on my trinket shelf. 

Top shelf

A midwest princess hat I bought at Chappell Roan’s Brooklyn Steel show in October 2023, a Yankees hat - inside me there are two wolves and they are New York Yankee and Midwest Princess. Green platform sock boots I used to wear constantly but now I never do for some reason but I still love them and can’t get myself to get rid of them.

Second shelf

Perfume: lots of Replica, two regular sized bottles, one solid perfume, three travel sized bottles, a handful of half empty samples in an antique pink glass tea cup made in France in the 60s. A stunning glass perfume bottle my friend Annie got me from the Corning Museum of Glass. A tomato scented candle. A little booklet of the Atlantic’s list of Great American Novels, which I got from the event they did about said list at The Strand. A poem about the ritual of femininity from an art exhibition my friend Destinee helped produce. A photo of me and my friend Medha, one of the last ones we ever took together. A beaded hippo brought back from South Africa by my friend Mia. A tiny glass Loch Ness Monster from a tiny store in Loch Ness, labeled in the store as a “wee Nessie”. A selection of books by some icons. I don’t think Sex and The City is a particularly good book but if I ever ran for office, I would get sworn in on it.

Third shelf

A collection of matchbooks from around the city and the country and two from Italy, sitting in a dish bought at an antique store in Maine. An XL matchbook with XL matches. An elephant candle from my friend Maire, who bought it in India while she was there for her wedding earlier this year. A print of Van Gogh’s Irises bought from the gift shop at The Getty after I cried looking at the real thing. A tile I bought in Tulum, a coaster from the Guinness factory in Dublin where I first tried (and realized I loved) Guinness. My most used lip products in a tomato bowl Annie got me in Mexico. My first little oil painting on canvas. 

Fourth shelf 

A teapot from my mom’s collection (one of her favorites) sitting on a stack of books I’ve yet to read (except Liarmouth, which I started and hated and abandoned). A tomato scented candle. A collection of plays from my teenage theater kid years, a few 60s home decor magazines I swiped from my grandma’s house. Flowers drawn in pastels. A growing collection of jewelry, cobbled together from eBay and antique stores and indie designers. Jewelry highlights include: a locket with a picture of me and my boyfriend from the photobooth at the Museum of Natural History, a pair of glass earrings Annie made, A Degas ballerina necklace also from the Getty museum gift shop, the earrings I wore to prom. The rings, mostly tarnished, sit in a lemon dish I bought in Amalfi. 

Fifth shelf

Admittedly a bit of a throwaway shelf - out of eyeline, out of mind. Sunglasses that I mostly don’t wear and hair ties and bobby pins and five years of journals. 

I know it’s materialistic to love Things but I do, especially these ones - the things I’ve collected over the past few years feel like a highlight reel of my life during that time. The shelves are a reminder of the things I love about my life, and of the people in it. So that’s what’s on my trinket shelf - thanks for watching, make sure to like and subscribe for new videos every week!