I’m not a hoarder … but I sure do keep a lot of “stuff!” We live in a relatively small house and it is full … of stuff. My wife started out with a nice, neat “Barbie Doll” house, and then “Ken” moved in and brought a lot of his stuff. Not long afterwards my mother passed away and I brought more stuff as we emptied her home and got it ready to sell.
Shortly after that, my father-in-law moved from his home to join his wife at a nursing home, and that’s when my wife brought a bunch of stuff from her parent’s house. In the meantime, I have continued to acquire more stuff.
We had a consultant come in and evaluate our use of space and after walking from room to room, moving from one floor to another, she paused and said …. “Have you thought about getting a bigger house?” We laughed and told her that we already had a storage shed we were renting because when I first moved in, there already wasn’t enough room in our house for all my stuff!
My two weakness are books and tools. I’ve given away box after box of books that I’ve accumulated over the years … each one a painful parting. Books, to me, are like friends … there is comfort in having them around! And as for tools … you can never have too many!
Every time I resolve to go through my “stuff” and get rid of some of it, I side-track myself with one of a couple of thoughts: 1) But I might need this someday; or 2) But I have a real connection with this.
I came across of book called Spark Joy by Marie Kondo and from that I learned that I need to be asking a different question … Does any particular item bring me joy? I’ve been asking “Do I want to get rid of this?”
I know that I have too much stuff … I know we’ve long since run out of storage space … and we have refused to get a larger storage unit. As a matter of fact, I’ve been talking for years about getting rid of the one we have … but it continues to attract more stuff.
The question isn’t if I can easily let something go … there is too much that I can’t! The more empowering question is, when I look at something, when I hold something, does it give me the feeling of JOY?
Isn’t that a great metaphor for life … let go of anything that doesn’t bring Joy?
What is in your life that you are hanging onto, even though there is no joy in it. What are you hanging onto …. just in case? What are you hanging onto because you “ought to?”
We each have an Inner Magnificence that is already complete, that needs nothing else, that wants us to know Joy in every aspect of our lives, but all too often we bury our Magnificence under lots of “stuff.”
So, here’s my invitation for today: Pick three things that are taking up space in your life, 3 things that don’t bring you Joy … and get rid of them. If you’re really courageous … do it again tomorrow … and the next day … until all you have is a JOY-full life!
The extent to which you do is the extent to which you’ll be able to say, “I feel good about being me!” … and that’s a promise!
