I have too much stuff.
I don’t mean a little too much, I mean a lot too much. I recently found myself moving some of my stuff out of one building, back into my parents house (yes…I still live with my parents) and I had to take three trips to get it all home. That isn’t just three trips with my Tahoe, but three trips with my 20′ cargo trailer. I shuttled the stuff to two different places and did my best to jam it all into the amount of space I have access too. That’s right, two different places. I have a 10X15 storage unit that is completely full of other stuff.
I have too much stuff.
In my mind, there is a good justification for all the stuff, like the professional keyboard I bought that I can’t play at all. I bought that to impress a girl, which seemed like a good enough reason at the time. I’ve been thinking about learning to play it…for the last 10 years or so. Hey, give me a break, I’m a little busy managing all my stuff to get around to learning to play…I’ll get to it eventually! It’s just between working to pay for all this stuff, and then finding places to put it all, it proves to be difficult to find the time to actually use some of it.
Occasionally it is nice to be the owner of lots of stuff, I’ve gotten to be the hero a few times loaning stuff out to people who didn’t have the stuff I have, it’s been nice to support other people in their endeavors. I recently helped a church record a pretty stellar worship CD by loaning out my recording rack and a few microphones. I really enjoy helping other peoples dreams come true, and I’ve had the opportunity a few times as a result of having specific stuff. Isn’t that justification enough?
I digress…
Not all of my stuff is equally useful. I’m a nostalgic guy, and if something has been with me for a while, it eventually earns a place in my heart. At this point it takes on an almost untouchable status in the pantheon of stuff. One such item is a sweatshirt from high school that was from one of my favorite bands, I wore it so often that the cuffs of the sleeves got pretty worn out and eventually torn off. I haven’t worn it for a few years, but I kept it in a place of honor on my chair. Under a pile of clothes. And a blanket. And a towel. Well I kept it, and I’m sure my life was better as a result. I’ve included a picture so you can bask in it’s awesomeness.
It’s like awesomeness that you wear.
That isn’t the best picture, so here is another one.
There it is…it’s the black thing that is on fire. Yep.
Yeah…so here we get to the crux of this post.
I have too much stuff…and it is time to do something about it.
The stuff is not just inconvenient, it at times stands between me and who I want to be. It keeps me anchored to a physical location and it costs me money, time, and energy that I want to be using elsewhere. I don’t want to be like the rich young ruler who wanted to follow God, but was held back by his unwillingness to let go of his possessions.
I want to be able to respond to God’s call in my life and I do not want to move three trailers worth of stuff in order to do it.
So as you may have gathered from the above picture, I’ve started taking action. It has been a slow process to even get to the point where I acknowledge I have a problem, and I think it will continue to be a slow process to reduce my possessions to a healthy amount. I am still trying to figure out how I’ll know when I’m done trimming things out, but I wanted to start this journey publicly so I wouldn’t talk myself out of it. I’m not sure if I’ll write new posts every time I make a significant change, or just add on to this one. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone will really care,
Does anyone need any stuff? I’ve got some to remove from my life.
Up next? The closet.
If you know me, you know I wear a grand total of 7 shirts on a regular basis. So why in the world do I have over 100?