WillThink4Wine

It ain’t always easy for weeds to grow, no.

I was listening to James Taylor on the way to the office this morning and this lyric captured my full attention. Time stopped. I couldn’t wait to get here, lest I forget what I wanted to get written.

Life seems to be about accumulation, doesn’t it? That must be why the ritual of Spring Cleaning was begun. We all accumulate. I accumulate all sorts of ’stuff’. We work hard at our accumulating. We work hard to earn the money so we can go shopping (which I dearly hate to do) to get even more ’stuff’. We run out of space to store it and then we go out and buy bigger houses just to hold all the ’stuff’. We keep a list of ’stuff’ we want but haven’t gotten yet.

After my divorce I had the task of weeding out 21 years of ’stuff’ to take with me. I was inflexible about only two categories: my pets and my pictures. Pretty much all the other ’stuff’ I could leave behind without a second thought. However, I was shocked at how many trips it took to get all that other ’stuff’. Mr X and I actually had 2 couches and 2 recliners, 2 sets of dishes, 2 sets of pots & pans… double stuff!

For the next 13 years I lived in a cute little Cottage which was less than 500 square feet. You’d think I wouldn’t have much ’stuff’ in the cute little cottage, right? Wrong. I am the Queen of Organization. I am able to neatly pack all sorts of ’stuff’ into small spaces.

Last spring I sold my business, moved to another state and bought a Yellow House. Prior to moving, I again weeded out 13 years of more accumulating. I had a yard sale not long after I moved because I have still had too much ’stuff’. After the yard sale I took no less than 10 boxes of books and countless boxes of assorted other ’stuff’ to the Goodwill store.

I asked my parents to move in with me. They have over 54 years of ’stuff’! Combining two households resulted in:

• 2 kitchens’ worth of ’stuff’ (my mother & I both love to cook, you can imagine all the ’stuff’)
• 2 living rooms
• 2 Christmas Trees (and related decorations)
• MotherDear has more clothes than Oprah

I had to buy 4 huge floor-to-ceiling cabinets (for all the kitchen ’stuff’) which are lining the walls of the garage. My ceiling in the garage started to crack under the weight of all the ’stuff’ stored in the attic above it.

Recently, I actually started shopping around for a big shed to hold all the ’stuff’ after the attic and garage was overstuffed.

Wait a minute.

Time to evaluate. When I consider the cost of the actual ’stuff’ along with the cost of storing it… Jeez Louise, I would have had a whole lot of money earning me money. Then there are some additional benefits: It would not consume so much time and energy - because you always have to move, clean and dust the ’stuff’, then eventually give it away or throw it away.

Time to weed my garden, once and for all.

Today, I promise myself to stop accumulating all that ’stuff’ that clutters my life.

Now, where to begin…