Stuff

Isn't it funny how we spend our lives accumulating stuff? Closets and drawers bulging. Garages filled so much so that cars no longer have a place in them. Rooms filled with furniture and decor. Space savers bought in the hope of saving space...but just taking up space.  We upgrade the size of homes to create more space, shift the stuff and continue stockpiling.  Then it happens.  Life serves the next chapter. Empty nesting and other life changes. The kids have taken what they need and want (within reason) and your faced with a house full of stuff that has no place in a smaller space.  You think it's impossible.  The task seems momentous. Then little by little, items find new homes and before you know it, you have achieved the possible.  As you look around you feel a sense of relief and you wonder...what was it all for?  Everyone has their own explanation. There is no right or wrong answer.

For me, the whole process has been liberating and enlightening.  Things that seemed to have so much importance, really don't.  Things I saved because I absolutely could not part with have little meaning because I can't even remember why I saved it. I rediscover things that I was 'going to use' but no longer have a need. The donating and tossing piles grow at a frightening rate and within a few months, a house full of stuff has been compacted to three rooms filled with neatly piled labeled boxes and select pieces of furniture. The time to move arrives and as all the stuff is shifted into a smaller space I find myself saying, I can get rid of more stuff. Within a few days the new space is filled but not bulging. Everything has a home. And so begins the next chapter with a resolution to keep it simple, cause simple is good and life is good.