Before I get into the post, I want to mention that Nathan and Meagan celebrated 15 years of marriage last week. For those who have been around since their wedding, you probably agree it’s incredible how fast those years passed. What a joy to celebrate two lovely and beloved people and the family they have created.
I just realized all their wedding photos are on our other computer so I will share a photo of their younger selves instead. Happy 15 years!
My younger sister, Ruth, texted last week and said she was going through a big minimalist phase and clearing a lot of items out of her house.
She sent a photo of some of the results of her efforts.
I asked if she was having a yard sale, and she replied, “None of those things are for sale. A neighbor owns a grassy spot by the town hall, and she set it up as a place for people to put out items they no longer need. Since Garden Valley is the name of our township, the grassy spot has been nicknamed The Garden Valley Goodwill.”
Isn’t that such a great idea? Cleaning out your house, blessing your neighbors, and maintaining a fun rural ritual, all at the same time. Love it!
I asked if I could share a couple of photos of her newly acquired neatness. So orderly. It makes my soul say, “Ahhhhh.”
After I finished texting with her, I thought with dismay about our basement, which is still far from being usable, with boxes and belongings stacked hither and yon, almost four years after moving in. And I feel powerless to even begin, feel like it’s an impossible task.
But then I think that if someone said they would give Steve and me two million dollars if we had the basement cleaned out in a week, we would make it happen. And that means it is possible. And we should do it. But have we? Nope. (Note: we have made some progress, culling things down by about 30% so we deserve a teeny, tiny gold medal.)
I have spent 17 years of my life living full-time in RVs that were 450 sq. feet or less. (A couple of them were much less.) During some of that time, Steve and I lived in an RV with Randy and Debbie, and Nathan as a newborn. Do you think I had extra clutter? No. I had no choice. My collecting of things was curtailed by my lack of available space.
There is something called “Parkinson’s Law” that describes the tendency for household possessions to multiply and fill all available storage. No matter how large a home or closet is, belongings will naturally accumulate until every space is full.
Considering the fact that families are smaller now than they were decades ago, that means we should have plenty of space for everything, right? Not so much.
I grew up in a large, poor family, and we always lived in small, not-so-inspiring homes. I was perfectly fine there and perfectly fine in teeny RVs. So why am I having a hard time where I am? Why are my closets stuffed and my basement even more so?
To my credit, I have made it an ongoing project to keep paring down, especially when it comes to my clothes. This is my entire collection of clothes I wear to work; I have three dresses that get rotated in there, as well. My closet is a third the size of the one I had in Manteo, and it is a good challenge for me to make it work. (I store off-season clothes in the closets in the guest rooms.)
I’m not writing about all of this because I have any answers; it’s just a conversation I wanted to have because I’d already been thinking about it, and then when Ruth texted, it kind of blossomed into a whole post.
I’ll close with a couple of pictures that tie into my subject: the first one is of Ruth’s granddaughter, Keziah, sitting quietly with a book at Ruth’s house.
It reminded me so much of another photo, taken a few years back at another window in Ruth’s living room. It’s Keziah’s great-grandma, and my mom, Jo Ann Campbell. (My mom lived with Ruth and Arnold in the last years of her life.)
There are so many beautiful examples Mom left behind–not just her love of books but her love of reading the Bible.
She lived life in a way I truly admire, holding lightly to things, possessions, belongings.
I was talking to someone at work about cleaning out our homes so we don’t leave the burden of it to our children when we’re gone. I happened to mention that it was pretty easy cleaning out after my Mom died because she basically had nothing.
My colleague was utterly astounded at that very idea. And to be honest, you don’t hear that much these days.
But Mom lived simply and was perfectly content. She had a small cupboard with her clothes, which took us about thirty minutes to go through after her passing.
And she had her beloved books, many of them filled with stories about missionaries, whom she prayed for frequently and supported faithfully out of her meager funds.
I’m not recommending that we all reach the ends of our lives with the small number of possessions Mom had. That was her life, and she was content with it. But I also don’t want to reach my last day with both fists clutching too tightly to too many things.
The Bible says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If every moment and thought is dedicated to acquiring more and more, our hearts are being pulled from the view of heavenly things.
I just need to try and find the balance for my own life and, in the back of my mind, keep Mom’s humble cupboard in view, filled only with a few items of clothing and the essence of a simple life well lived.
What about you?
Are you a minimalist, a maximalist or somewhere in between?
What is your biggest challenge in managing your possessions?
What advice have you learned along the way that you’d like to share?
Happy Anniversary to Nathan and Megan.
Love the little child sized chair Keziah is sitting in.
I am a maximalist trying to downsize. I have gotten rid of a lot of stuff recently. Since I had no kids, and my husbands family wouldn’t want my stuff, I have been selling my old toys and giving family items to my niece and anyone else who asks. I have never had nice empty rooms, but even as a child I would look at the rooms in the sears catalog and wish I had a room like that.
My biggest challenge is giving away a memory. I look at an item and it draws me to good memories and I hate to part with said item then. I also like the antiquity of some items and enjoy looking at them. Fortunately we have a large storage room in our basement. We can use half of the basement and store in the other half.
My advice on clothes (most of which I get cheap at a thrift shop) is when you get a new item of clothes, get rid of a item of clothes that is past it’s prime or not worn as frequently.
I love the photos of the two readers. ♥️
I’m a minimalist, married to a keeper (he’s definitely a keeper, but he keeps things that I would toss). Lol
But we do this: once a year—generally between Christmas and the New Year— we go through our kitchen and take inventory of things we use daily/frequently/rarely. And we put the “rarely” things in a box in the basement. The next year, whatever is still in that box, untouched, we donate. It’s a cycle!
Also – having spent part of my adult life as a military spouse, I’m accustomed to boxes and boxes of stuff that sometimes never got unpacked between frequent moves. There was ONE box that moved into six houses and never got opened. To this day, I don’t remember what was in it. But I figured if it hadn’t been opened in 8 years there was nothing in it I needed or wanted. So it got tossed.
I do have one box of “things” that I love or that mean something to me that nobody else in this world would care about. That box stays with me until I die, and my daughter knows she will simply throw it away that day, without opening it.
We will be retiring to the UK in about two years, and probably taking only what will fit into four checked bags. Looking around this house it’s daunting to think of getting rid of our accumulated stuff but I’m so looking forward to the lightness of having so little.