I had this Ziggy tee shirt when I was a kid, and I probably wore it 360 days of the year for like three years. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it was one of those shirts that, as soon as Mom washed it, it was back on my body. Now, as a mom myself, I find myself taking certain garments out of rotation at laundry time because I’m so dang sick of seeing that Angry Birds shirt.

But we all have things like the Ziggy tee shirt. Things we cherish and can’t seem to let go of, even when they’re tattered and no longer even fit us. When that happened, Grandma got out the sewing kit and I ended up with a new Ziggy pillow. Shabby as it was, I loved that shirt. It was soft, and it was familiar, and it was Ziggy.

There are other shabby things we love. Brandy’s Dale Earnhardt coffee mug, which belonged to her grandmother. Also her sofa: somehow the torn fabric and stuffing sticking out all over has made it more comfortable and lovable. When your $4000 mattress gives you a backache, where do you end up? That’s right – on the shabby 1973 sofa you pilfered from your childhood home.

A child’s blankie gets pretty shabby. There’s usually one corner of it that spends more time in the kid’s mouth than the rest of it… that part’s extra faded and permanently wrinkly… but those (seemingly disgusting) details are what define the blankie as “MINE!” and no one else’s. Special. And pants. We all have a pair of shabby sweat pants, jeans, yoga pants, pajama bottoms… in fact in my house, it’s not uncommon to hear, “Man, I can’t wait to put on my shabby pants.” We love shabby.

Old people, too, get kinda shabby. Now, I don’t mean that in any derogatory way. I feel I’m allowed to talk about old people because I was raised by an old person. I can also speak freely about nerds and awkward people because I belong to those groups. But when you visit an important old person in your life, and you smell her White Shoulders perfume and you see her shabby easy chair, the dent of the cushion reflecting the shape of her backside perfectly and you see her Desert Rose dishes and the rabbit ears on her Magnavox, admit it: you are tranquilized by nostalgia and you don’t want to leave.

And when you yearn for old things in your not-so-old life, so you can enjoy a feeling of nostalgia before you’re old enough to actually experience it… or if you ARE old but you unfortunately got rid of all your cool nostalgic belongings already, you can capture that feeling… at Shabby Love.

Shabby Love specializes in reclaiming, upcycling, and refurbishing old, otherwise unwanted stuff. And I don’t know about you, but I think things that have been rescued — buildings, pets, furniture, books — have a special kind of beauty. I walked through the store — with its wooden table and blue chest and green china cabinet and red side table and cheese grater light fixture — and I just wanted to take all those beautiful orphans home. To add to the personality of the furniture, each piece that’s been painted has a name. I met “Edna,” “Stan,” and “Maggie,” and they all certainly spoke to me.

We saw an old typewriter and old suitcases made of wood. WOOD. Who would want to lug around a solid wood suitcase?? Practical or not, those things are gorgeous. And saw beautiful lockets and pendants, necklaces and brooches and bracelets, hanging there… waiting.

If you’re curious about the paint they use, it’s called Chalk Paint, and you can even attend a workshop at Shabby Love on April 12th. Just sign up and bring a (reasonably sized) piece of (preferably rescued) furniture. They’ll supply the rest! And your life can be a little shabbier. Turns out shabby’s not too shabby after all.

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