LETTING GO

Clutter, Jamestown, NC

Trophies, Jamestown, NC

Many of us are now spending more time at home than we would probably want to admit due to the 2020 Corona pandemic.  And although it’s been taxing on a society that has always enjoyed the freedom of movement, that’s the best plan right now until a vaccine is widely administered.  As a consequence, this “home alone” time has forced me to finally tackle the burgeoning storage room we had built over the garage, since basements aren’t practical in the Carolinas.

Our family transferred here from the Kansas City area where full basements are common.  And they become great accumulators of all sorts of material items, like the excess we thought we wanted to keep from my mother-in law’s house as one little example.  Much of our other material baggage is on us, however!  And businesses like Containers-R-Us only make it more efficient to stash away material possessions that never see the light of day again as we use our home like a storage unit!  Not to mention that we live in a consumer-driven culture where we are bombarded by messages like “we want it and we want it now!”

There’s a lot of reasons we hold onto things, primarily procrastination.  Guilty as charged!  Other good excuses include time is precious, we’re sentimental creatures, possibly needing something later, waiting for other family members to decide on items, waiting for winter weather when you’re forced inside, etc.  But possessions can become an anchor on our life that demand time, space and attention.  We had a saying at work that “the time it takes to finish a task is directly proportional to the time available.”  And I believe its corollary is “the amount of stuff that accumulates in a house is directly proportional to the space available” --like storage rooms and walk-in closets.  Documents are another challenge and the most tedious, as they must be examined piece by piece and then possibly shredded.

Our focus needs to be on reasons for letting go of possessions.  I don’t even attempt to sell things because I’ve been blessed with being born in America, having a loving and supportive family, applying myself to education (after a life lesson start), and working hard at a profession that was growing and ripe with opportunity.  And I’ve learned that it’s much easier and fulfilling to part with possessions if I know they can be useful to others.

Marie Kondo has gained fame for leading the way of letting go by asking one simple question when handling material possessions: “Does this spark joy in my life?”  If not, you won’t start liking something you haven’t used in at least a year.  And there’s the old 80/20 rule that applies to so many things in life like clothing, household items, etc.--we only use 20% of the things in our possession 80% of the time.  George Carlin famously defined a house as “a pile of stuff with a roof over it.”  A home is where love lives.  It’s good to pause life now and again to affirm we abide in a home.

And finally, I really got off to a good start in letting go by texting a photograph of some trophies to my daughter Beth in Chicago and asking if she wanted to keep or discard them?  She replied “I’ve managed to find success without trophies.”  

There is great satisfaction in applying ourselves to be successful and charitable as long as we remain mindful of treating worldly possessions as trophies.