Less is More

When I was in high school, I dreamed about the day when I would have my own house that I could decorate and furnish any way I wanted.

I had no particular sense of style back then, but now that I look back at that era, I'm not sure anyone did. Ruffled everything (curtains, bedding, couches) and tiny printed wallpaper ruled - for everyone! But I didn't care that I didn't have style. I just wanted my own place. And in my mind, "my own place" needed to be stuffed full with my own stuff.

I collected as much as I could throughout those high school years. Both my parents lost their parents during those years, so I inherited an above average amount of furniture and household items that I stashed away for my someday.

When I moved into my house after college, and then when it became solely my house after my last roommate moved out four years later, I indeed stuffed every corner full of something. I wasn't a hoarder, but I was a collector. A collector of stuff. Empty space made me nervous.

I wanted stuff to look at and stuff to use. I wanted stuff on standby in case current stuff broke. I wanted stuff that was always mine and stuff that had been somewhere else and came stuffed with memories.

Stuff, stuff, stuff.

I told Ryan this week that I think my mentality toward stuff began to change after the tornado that hit my sister's town ten years ago. I panicked for her when I found out her house blew away, because I knew that left her without her stuff, and I wanted to help her get it all replaced immediately. Then I found out that while losing everything to a wind event wouldn't have been her first choice for a means of downsizing, she also wasn't in a hurry to put it all back as it had been. She was in a hurry to think about what she really wanted and needed and replace accordingly.

Beginning with that, God slowly began to change my view of stuff. Getting married was the next big wake-up call for me. Suddenly having about 2800 square feet of stuff that needed to be combined and cut in half caused us to create rules about the things we wanted to keep and the things we wanted to let go. We got rid of duplicates, excess, and things that weren't representative of us as a couple.

It worked!

But we still had a lot.

So after I quit my job, I went through the entire house pretty ruthlessly and eliminated six more truckloads of excess, which provided us with a nice yard sale. The funds from our yard sale sent us on a nice vacation, with memories we hold much closer than the trinkets we sold.

We unloaded about three more truckloads a few months later when we moved, and recently, we've been looking around again, wondering how much of what we have is really necessary.

It's not that we feel crowded these days. On the contrary: we have more room than we've ever had, and it's lovely to spread out and not feel overly cluttered. But stuff leads to maintenance. And we find ourselves wondering if we really need to maintain quite as much as we have scattered around us.

And if not, what could we part with?

We don't have answers yet. These are just the questions we wrestle with right now. What matters most to us? Is there something God is calling us to let go of? He seems to be slowly pulling our hearts away from loving our stuff, and we want to be obedient to Him!

How about you? Love your stuff? Anything you think you could absolutely NOT live without?