Candy Spelling dahl-ing, I can certainly relate to your life these days. You’re giving up your 56,500 square feet Holmby Hills manse to move into 16,500 square feet of condo space in Century City. I had to do the same. Well, maybe your dimensions are larger but our percentage is somewhat similar.
When I moved to Italy, I gave up my nearly 2,000 square-foot townhouse with a backyard and garage for much smaller digs for a year in Florence then 15 months in Positano. Afterward, I spent four years in New York City in various 500-square-foot apartments. So I’m here to tell you Candy, it can be done. You may not like it. But then again, a story in today’s L.A. Times said you’re not even sure how many rooms you have in The Manor, which has been on the block for eight months at $150 million and is not being reduced. Do you know how many rooms I had in a couple of my Manhattan apartments? One room plus a bath and kitchen. No flower-cutting room, gift-wrapping room, wine cellar/tasting room, barbershop, silver storage room and the such for me. Your service wing has five maids’ bedrooms and two butlers’ suites. My overnight guests had to share a bed with me and I considered it a big deal when I had enough room in one apartment to push my bed over a few feet and put a blow-up Aerobed next to mine.
I embraced my downsizing (to a point) and am sure you will too. Being forced to live in smaller quarters taught me how not to be a pack rat and how not to spend money frivolously on kitchen gadgets I might never use or clothes I may never wear. I only kept a year’s worth of magazines on hand and shredded docs on a regular basis. I not-so-kindly asked publicists to quit mailing unsolicited press kits to my home as not only did I not have any room to store them but it was a waste of trees and their clients’ money. I adhered to the rule of if I hadn’t worn it in a year then I had to get rid of it. Because I’ve always loved to entertain, I reserved the party room in the luxurious Manhattan high-rise ($2541 a month for 500 sq. ft) I lived for a year and planned to give an Emmy party. Then I realized, I didn’t have any of the proper party accoutrements, such as serving dishes, etc. If I bought those things then I wouldn’t have anywhere to store them afterward because my kitchen was full. And so was under my bed. So I cancelled the party.
Now that I’m back in my spacious (by my standards) pad, I wonder where is all of my stuff. I went to my closet in search of a white skirt this summer and there was not even one. I guess I gave the one or two I had away when I lived in NYC. I could have sworn I had more shoes and purses than what is in my closet. Why did my friend Renata have to go to a store to buy me a USC shirt the morning of last Saturday’s homecoming game? Because I had somehow tossed my lone USC sweatshirt too, although I know I could still fit it. The holidays are coming and I don’t have a red sweater. What happened to them? I had three George Foreman grills. Why do I now only have one, and the smallest one at that? Over the summer as I prepared for my high school reunion picnic I realized I didn’t have an ice chest. I know I used to have one or two. Stacked in the closet in my office are oodles of boxes of books purchased when I lived in Italy and New York. What happened to my bookcases? Where are all of those flower vases I somehow accumulated? I remember a stick mixer that I won in a raffle at a company holiday function when I worked at the Pittsburgh Press in the late 80s. I never used the gadget but I looked for it the other day. It’s gone too. I have an ironing board but no iron, not that I’ve ironed in a decade or so (that’s why dry cleaners are for) but overnight visitors expect me to have one.
When I was away, I just assumed some of these effects were in storage. But they weren’t. I gave away more than I realized since I never planned on coming back from Italy and continuously purged in NYC.
Now that I’m in L.A., I want my stuff again. Candy, I don’t know what you plan to do with all of your belongings on your 4.7 acre property aptly called Candyland. You can’t take everything with you and I have a feeling you’re not giving anything to your daughter Tori Spelling. So if you’re looking for someplace to unload your unwanted possessions, look this way. I have room.
Here’s the condo building Candy plans to move into next year. She bought the top two floors for $47 million.
