This is that time of year when the cold weather starts to wear on us and you start dreaming about shedding sweaters and coats for a pretty cotton sundress or simply shorts and a T-shirt. It’s also the time when you start to feel claustrophobic from living indoors. You take a look around and all you see is clutter. It’s been dubbed “spring cleaning” for decades now. Everyone from Oprah to all the morning shows are talking about clutter and re-organization. As a matter of fact, there are TV shows now just about people that horde and live in clutter—it’s officially considered an addiction. For the rest of us, the clutter starts naturally—when we’re preparing for winter, we become like squirrels packing our cheeks full of all we can carry or bears preparing to hibernate. It’s a natural instinct, like when the weather report calls for a snow storm, and we all go running to the store to pack full our cabinets with anything and everything we can fill our carts with, because you never know what you might need.
We have so much stuff! We have to make room continually for more stuff. That’s what we do. After all, it was all on sale. We just can’t resist getting more stuff for less. I used to not understand “minimalism” at all: It seemed completely cold, stark and uncomfortable. But you’ve got to admit, it’s organized. There has got to be a happy medium.
So now, I’m starting to feel the need to give away anything and all that’s not being used in my home and life. The feeling came over me like a wave while watching so many people in need because of the devastation going on in the world. Watching what happened in New Orleans when Katrina hit, as families literally lost loved ones and every single thing that they had. Now Haiti and Chile, it’s just unimaginable!
It always amazes me just how basic and simple everything becomes when a tragedy hits. Everything at that moment changes. Everything that we thought was so important before the incident doesn’t even matter; it’s the basics that we’ve come to take for granted in our lives until we don’t have them—like water to drink that’s not contaminated, a place to sleep that’s safe and covered, some semblance of nutrition, medical emergency care, medicine—immediately we shift into survival mode.
When our family went through our own personal tragedy last year, we spent months living in hospitals. The clothes on our backs and whatever we had with us at the time was all that we had when we received the horrible call that Chase, my stepson, had a stroke. All of a sudden there was no “stuff,” no need for anything. Your life stops when something happens to someone you love. You could be in your PJs or on a beach with nothing but a swimsuit, like half of our family at the time. It doesn’t matter what you were doing or just how important you think your plans are: When tragedy strikes, you get stripped down to your soul. You’re completely in a space that makes you realize how fragile life is and all the stuff in the world simply doesn’t mean a darn thing.
Ever since, I’ve been purging things out of my closet, drawers and storage units and passing them along. I opened up a storage unit to things that I thought I could never live without. Ha! I forgot they were even there. So, I want to encourage you to go to your closets and drawers you’re afraid to face. Start letting go of storage units full of stuff that I promise you that you can live without and let it all go.
Someone is praying for a suit right this minute that they can’t afford to buy so they can go to that job interview or for a coat for a child to walk to school in the freezing cold. Old blankets can warm anyone in need or a cozy chair or old sofa that’s just causing you a monthly payment in storage can make someone’s space feel like a home.
When my son Michael was 3 years old, we moved into an apartment, starting over after a divorce. We only had a mattress from his crib and a top mattress for me to sleep on. No furniture whatsoever. One day we went to visit a young mom downstairs who had a son about Mike’s age, so the boys could get together and play. Michael walked in and it was the exact same floor plan as our apartment. He started looking around, his eyes got big and he didn’t say a thing. He went into the young boy’s room and played. When we left, Mike was quiet. I could see that little brain of his working. I asked him if he was all right? He looked up at me and said; “Mom, we should have got the same apartment they got! It has cool stuff in it.”
I smiled, but of course my heart broke and I picked him up. I had tears in my eyes. Michael grabbed my face with his little hands and looked me right in the eyes and said; “Mommy, don’t cry. We have each other. We don’t need that cool stuff!”
He was right, but an old sofa hand-me-down would have been pretty comfortable to cozy up on at night. Remember what they say: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
So what are you waiting for?
Change Your Home, Change the World
www.mollandersonhome.com