I’ve posted similar pictures before. I’m afraid you might start to think my house always looks like this. It doesn’t. Whenever we have company, it looks much better.
These, my friends, are the scenes of progress. At last count, I have piles of things headed to 8 different places. I’m spreading the wealth.
I’m not sure if I should be proud of the amount of stuff we’re shedding from our household. Maybe I should be ashamed that we’ve held on to so much needless stuff. I was marveling this afternoon at God’s sense of humor. We sold our last house for many reasons, but one of the main ones was the feeling that we were growing out of the house. Then God provides this house which is so much bigger (with less storage space, though) and now we have the desire to downsize our possessions and are willing to move back into a smaller house. I guess it took that move to spur on that desire.
I don’t think we would describe ourselves as materialistic. We forego a lot of what our culture deems necessary. We try not to buy things we don’t really need. But as I’ve worked my though these piles over the last few months, I’ve come to two realizations.
First, Jason and I are both sentimentalists. We assign value to things based on memories and people. We have things that are really no use to us, yet we hang on to them because of the person who gave them to us, or the memories associated with them. How do you deal with that?
Second, while we’ve made an effort to not accumulate much new stuff, we’ve not done a good job of getting rid of old stuff. We hang on to it for the “just in case” moments. We’ll find a new cranny to put it in, or even box it up and find a basement corner in which to store it. That’s not a huge deal—until we have to move it. And then face the reality we’ll have to move it again. I’m so thankful we’re finally realizing the futility of that.
Not to say there isn’t some pain in the process. It’s hard letting go of things. It’s also hard work. And it’s making a big mess out of my house.
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