Happy Monday to you all!! Lici and I are in the process of getting ready to move. It is one of the most tedious, demanding tasks especially if you are at all sentimental. It is a time to really gauge the importance of your trinkets and tchotchkes and mountains of books and old trophies and clothes that don’t fit anymore and the like. Do I really need three different sets of silverware? Or three waffle irons? But that one makes Mickey shaped waffles. Or how about the magnitude of fridge art from the kids’ childhoods? Or 14 different sized coolers or, in our case where we combined households, 5 sets of allen wrenches, three identical socket sets, etc.
Do we have a yard sale? Probably gonna take 3 or 4 to get rid of all this. When do we have time? Do we store this stuff? We are moving into something temporary while we remodel the Main Street house. Do we really want to pay to store ALL of this? No. Do we know for sure what we will need at the new place? No. Do we want to spend money to replace stuff that is perfectly fine just because we sold it three months ago? Again, no. So we sort and throw away and donate and sell and try to plan ahead.
At some point, I stop and look at it and scratch my head. Why do we even have all this stuff? I don’t think of myself as materialistic. But I do love nice shoes and nice sunglasses and having camping gear “just in case” and all the things.
Why bring all this up? Because I think a lot of you see it the same way. You have a moment where you go, “my word where did all this junk come from?” I think we get obsessed with stuff. We find comfort in stuff. We probably also find comfort in being able to have stuff at some core level.
I am taking the opportunity in this move to reduce my stuff and going to try really hard to not accumulate more than I actually use from this point forward. I want to touch every item and ask myself, really, will I ever use this again and is it worth keeping. And then in the future ask, “do I already have this?” It is a lofty goal. It is one that I will grow weary trying to accomplish but it is worthwhile.
