I’ve been thinking about possessions lately. I take our dog Yukon for a couple mile walk everyday around the neighborhood. He need the exercise and so do I.
The next block over, there is a thin man in his 70’s with white hair and one of those great walrus mustaches. He’s probably a widow and lives in an old house painted kind of a puke green. He has a dog as well, an older golden retriever that Yukon likes to gawk at every time he sees her.
He recently put his house on the market to sell. It’s very much a fixer upper, with siding falling off in certain places and mold growing on parts of the walls.
Being what the housing market is currently in California, it sold within a month and half, for way more than it should of. But, hats off to the guy, I’m happy for him for getting a lot for his house, and hopefully he will live happily ever after.
He did get to live in the house for about 2 months after it sold, so my dog and I still got to gawk at his house and his dog. He had a garage sale a week and a half ago for the pre move purge. A whole garage driveway full of stuff.
He sold what he could, but the next day there was a whole driveway full of stuff that was now a free pile. We stopped on our way past, to see if there was anything we wanted. I looked over the hoard and didn’t see anything that would benefit our lives and we kept walking.
I got to thinking, as I typically do while I walk, since my only company is more interested in peeing on things. This guy has a whole driveway full of stuff he doesn’t want. He tried to sell it and there is still a whole driveway full of stuff no one wanted to buy. It’s now been a week and a half since the free pile started and there is still a whole driveway full of stuff he can’t give away!
Wow, that’s crazy to think that he had all of these possessions that no one wants for I don’t know how many years. That’s some baggage.
Of course that got me thinking about my own family’s possessions. Let me tell you, we have STUFF. Having 4 kids with their combined 62 years of collecting. Add that to the 87 years of my wife’s and my collecting and that’s a whopping 149 years of possessions!
Fortunately we have had to move a few times, as recently as a couple of years ago. Nothing like moving to get you to pull out your things and look at them. We continue to purge, we seem to always have a bag or two that accumulates over a couple of months for Salvation Army’s thrift shop.
I’ve personally gotten extra fussy since the cancer diagnosis, about getting things that only benefit me or my families lives. Who wants to deal with a pile of extra stuff in the case of my untimely departure. If something doesn’t give me happiness, I don’t want it.
When you look at a item, does it fulfill a purpose or does it give you happiness that you own it? If it doesn’t, maybe you shouldn’t own it anymore. Of course when you bought the item, you were happy and excited about it. Toys are the best example of that. My kids darn near exploded 🤩 with excitement every birthday or Christmas (I’m a little jealous that’s adults loose that, I’m try to get that back a bit).
After the excitement fades, are you still happy you own it?
Long term storage cracks me up. Sure it has its uses, especially for people in between homes or business use. But if it’s used for people who just have so much stuff that they can’t fit into their homes and can’t part with, it’s just crazy. Paying hundreds of dollars a month to keep owning something that you don’t want to look at. America at its best.
It’s also funny, when you sell or give away a possession, you feel so much better and lighter now that’s its out of your life. In this case, less is more!
To have a better life, better your everyday life just a little. One way of doing that is to be not bogged down by your possessions.
Eat your vegetables!
Carrots Over Cancer 