Questions for the Day

How much of the chaos in our homes, do we create?
How do we accomplish “peaceful” when all around us there’s pandemonium?
How do we expect to experience calm when our environment is screaming “look at me“?

Could you do more with less?

When you look around your home what’s extraneous or irrelevant to your present life?
What reminds you of an unpleasant past?
What STUFF burdens you?

How different would your life be if you’d choose to live only with what you love and use?
Can you imagine opening your bedroom closet and not being overwhelmed by things that you don’t like, that don’t fit or that just don’t “work?”
What if you never again had to search for your car keys, the remote, that perfect recipe, a receipt or those batteries you’re sure you bought?

Moving Forward (aka deciding to stop being stuck in the past)

I could go on and on about how Living with Less (LWL) really CAN change your life, but before we go there, I want to talk about the reasons people hang onto things. (I am not talking about chronic hoarding—which is a neuro-psychological condition.)

We humans “hunt and gather and store” an awful lot of stuff. And, if we don’t understand “why” we got there—the reasons we’re living with so many “things”—it’s tough to put the wheels in motion to create a new reality.

Some of these reasons stem from personal or emotional issues including:
• Poverty early in life—the fear of not having enough causes people to hold onto things so that they never experience that scarcity again
• Moving a lot—for some, moving from place to place is an adventure; for others, it’s unsettling and creates a nesting instinct; a desire to “hunker down” and create a place to call “home”
• The environment you grew up in—if you were raised in a home with a parent who was a hoarder, that became your “real”—we often carry forward behaviors or lifestyles (good or bad) simply because that’s what we know
• Being very shy or having been hurt by people—for folks who are naturally shy or have often been hurt by others, cocooning—finding comfort in staying home—is easier than risking rejection by putting themselves outside their comfort zone
• Loss—the absence of a significant person sometimes creates a desire to hold onto things that remind him/her of the person who’s gone

In addition to the more internalized explanations above, we often have too much “stuff” for more simplistic reasons:
• Feeling Overwhelmed—it’s a lot of work to figure out what to keep and what to throw, so it becomes easier to simply live with it
• The “What If” clause—“What if we run out of paper towels?”, “What if both of our can openers break and we need this third one?”, “What if I lose 30 pounds and this dress fits again?”, “What if we need these 75 old gift boxes?”
• Misguided loyalty-—this happens when you stick something in the back of a closet or cabinet because it belonged to someone dearly departed and you don’t know how to be “okay” with getting rid of it, even though you know you’ll never use it

Do any of these eight situations resonate with you?

Yesterday, I already started seeing the “Pre-Black Friday” specials that we’re going to soon be bombarded with. Consumerism is alive and well, so we’ll continue this important discussion tomorrow. If you have any particular questions, send them my way.
Kay

I’m wondering if God is ever wondering why we keep acquiring so much “stuff”. Maybe we should simply STOP and look at what we already have.

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