As I packed the umpteenth box yesterday following a flooded basement, I started thinking about “stuff.” Not the stuff that dreams are made of. No, I was thinking about stuff that collects dust, fills drawers, and collects on shelves.
We’ve got a lot of stuff in our house. Mind you, we’re not moving into the league of hoarders. I take some consolation in that. But we still have a lot of stuff. Not as much as many, but more than others and certainly more than we need. There’s a certain irony that as I type there’s a magazine sitting on my desktop with a cover article, “Organizing solutions for every room!”
Emotional and psychological weight
By the time you get into your 50s, it’s not unusual to have accumulated a lot of stuff. And I’ll admit, as long as my husband isn’t reading this, that the vast majority of our accumulations can be traced to me. We’ve been really intentional over the last year or two in sorting, donating, etc. Clearly, we have more work to do.
There’s a lot of weight in that stuff. Not just the weight of the boxes on moving day. There’s emotional and psychological weight too. I’ve been reading the Unclutterer blog for a year or more now, and I really appreciate the thoughtful posts that go beyond just organizing to asking the harder questions about our personal possessions.
So, where are you in all this? Are you traveling lightly in this journey on earth or are you bogged down with possessions?
Linda Post Bushkofsky is executive director of Women of the ELCA. This Throwback Thursday first ran in November 2011. Now that you have time, could you get rid of some stuff?
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
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I am 76 years young and expect to be around for another 20 years. Considerations of mortality have me realizing that, as difficult as it is to let go of all kinds of “stuff” because of memories connected with it; or “oh, that looks like a good recipe;” I can only look at or use just so much. I need to hold on to the idea that less is more. I need to rid myself of a lot of relatively unimportant “stuff” to make room for relationships with people, and to have time to sit and listen to that tiny wren sing his giant song.
Then I might have time to reconnect with special people like the woman who sent me to Switzerland for a Water Crisis Conference many years ago!