Saturday Stuff-It Chronicles #1

Okay, STUFF.  So much can and should be said about the way we sadly here in North America use, desire, waste, and obsess about STUFF so where do I start?

 I'll start at the beginning...well, my beginning...Here’s a brief overview of my life with stuff.

Despite the fact that we moved almost every year in our childhood (my mom jokingly states that “I never did spring cleaning, I just moved”), my siblings and I still groan about the accumulations of our parents.  Basement storage areas over-brimming with odds and ends that are never used, let alone looked at, two chest freezers stuffed as full as possible, dozens and dozens of tools lining benches, piled on tables, hung on garage walls, barn and garage filled – simply stated: there is stuff everywhere…

These were the seeds that could have sent me either way: clinging so tightly to objects that I cornered myself in with only a small path out, or the opposite reality of seemingly-excessive purging.  I have chosen, or simply become?, the latter.

“Use it or lose it” is a mindset for my husband and I's home.  Items in our home need to serve a purpose (and be regularly used for that purpose) or have a quality of beauty regularly admired (and shown off in key locations – like the bowl of shells we collected in Florida sitting as a centerpiece in our kitchen that will, when we no longer appreciate it there, move out to the garden, tossed amongst pathway gravel or garden greenery to be enjoyed from its new home). 

There are very few dust-gathering objects in this household (which is a very good thing indeed since I don’t appear to have been born with the dusting gene…the ironing gene skipped over me too).

Once as I haphazardly tossed an empty box on to our bed and began kneading through my already-limited collection of clothing for items of which to donate, I noticed my husband’s frantic grab at a t-shirt.  I must have given him some sort of strange glance for he quickly threw on the shirt and stated, “see, I have worn it…I just tried it on…now I’m wearing it”. 

 “Whaaa?!” I expressed, still curious as to what he was doing. 

 “Well, if I haven’t worn something in 6 months I have to get rid of it, right?  So I’m just wearing it now so that I have indeed worn it in the past six months…that means I get to keep it now, right?”

 There is a freedom in “letting go”…one which can’t be explained and which really makes no sense until it is experienced…a complete freedom…

It seems to me that in North America we do not actually own our stuff but rather it owns us…we spend hoards of money on stuff that we likely don’t need and sometimes won’t even use, and then hoards of money on high-tech door locks and alarm systems to protect it, and hoards of time dusting items on shelves or hoards more money paying someone else to come dust it because we don’t have the time to…we spend hoards of time whipper snipping borders, blowing leaves and cutting lawns we never play on let alone rarely even walk on (in case it gets the shoes we spent so much money on dirty)…we spend hoards of worry and anxiety on the fear of losing something (like jewellery) or denting something (like our cars) or getting something dirty (like furniture).

 I simply do not want to be owned by my stuff…

I love that feeling of freedom when you have little more than the basics (which aren’t even really basics when you look at what most people in the rest of the world have).

 

And I just wish that feeling for everyone!  So there...that is my beginning, my history with stuff, and perhaps some clarity as to why I want to chuck everything but my (limited) sanity (and my family -  that draws a fine line between creating that sanity and destroying it!?)

 Matthew 6:18-20

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.