There are things building up… things we’ve set aside because we might need them, but someplace in us makes it so that we don’t use them.  They are clutter.  They are stuff.  They are things we really are just letting stay in our house to complicate our lives.  What are these things you wonder?  The easy bake oven we gave to Adair years ago for Christmas that was only used a couple of times, if that.  Then there is the box full of pans for the kitchen, baking dishes, etc. that will not fit in our kitchen as is, so they sit downstairs awaiting use.  Have I used them?  Maybe once or twice.  Will I use them someday?  Possibly…. and if I throw them away, I won’t be able to use them.  But the thing its one of many things that sit in boxes in our basement, for that time, that day when we have more storage so that we can actually put them away (you know, put them away inside a cupboard in case we want to use them someday… basically changing its location, not getting to the root of the problem that we may never use it).  Why have it if we won’t use it?

We have boxes and boxes of things… of Mike’s old textbooks from college, or of fabric that I somehow have accumulated but never used.  Or of cookbooks that I swear I will use when we get our new kitchen installed somewhere down the line… when in reality, if I want a recipe I usually use the internet to find one.  Why do I keep the cookbooks then?  Because maybe, just maybe I will want to use it someday….  I guess.  Realistically though… will I?  Of course not.   I may have every good intention to, but honestly… will I?  I suppose if I have it I just might, but if I don’t, then I will find another way.

It’s like that for many things in this house.  The skinny jeans, the extra blankets, the boxes of saved artwork from my children… not just one box, but it’s climbing to the amount of 4 or 5 boxes now.  I guess I can’t decide what is worth keeping and what is worth throwing away.  I guess the problem comes because its all WORTH something, but is it worth this burden of keeping it, of holding onto it because someday my kids will be delighted to say “ohh Mommy!  Thank you for keeping all of my school work and drawings from infancy!  How did you know I would want it all?  How did you know that I’d want to see every piece of homework that I did while in first grade?” OF COURSE NOT!  They will likely say “Why on earth did you keep that? It’s a scribble on a piece of paper!!!” Somehow I think if I keep it, it will keep me connected to their childhood, to their innocence, and to the deep love I have for them.  BUT, in all truth, I’m already connected to that, because I WAS THERE!  Good heavens.  I know I can go through and keep a few, but the problem comes because how do I decide which few that is?  Like Nike says… Just Do It.

So the question remains… how do I free us from this clutter that we are somehow unintentionally letting define us?  How do I separate myself from it so that I can break its choke-hold on us?  Sure, a garage sale could cure that… but realistically I won’t have one of those… instead I’d pile it all together and think it didn’t look like enough to have a garage sale from and I’d say this is our garage sale pile, let’s add things to it and let it get bigger so that we can have a productive garage sale…. all the while we’d be still suffocating under the weight of this crap.

There is a switch that I think is faulty in my brain…. the “to keep or to throw/give away” switch.  Today I shall try to flip it on and off in repetition to see if I can make progress.  I’m going to open the trunk of my car and make several trips up and down the stairs until its filled!  I am then going to happily drive to the thrift store and unload the weight of it off my shoulders.  I can already feel how freeing that will feel.

Maybe I’ll find that the switch in my brain does work.  Mercy.