I'll admit it...I've been accused of being a pack rat (by my husband of course). I never considered myself a pack rat. I didn't have that much stuff...or did I??? When we put our house on the market the first time around, I couldn't bear to part with much of anything. We packed lots of boxes and rented a storage unit to hide all this stuff in. We filled the storage unit to the brim and put overflow and anything I felt needed some sort of temperature control over at my In-laws' house in one of their extra bedrooms. Guess what...that stuff stayed "hidden" for over six months and with the exeption of a couple seasonal items...I didn't have a need to use ANY of it!!! I decided I needed to change my additude and outlook on "stuff". I started purging our home of unneeded items. I was tired of paying for a storage unit to house stuff I wasn't using, so we brought all of our stuff back home. I realized I liked the uncluttered feel that the house had when we had cleared out all the stuff that "made the house look smaller" so we could stage it for sale. I started small (old clothes that are about 6 sizes too small...come on...by the time...if I ever...can fit into those clothes again, they will be completely outdated and might not even fit the way they used to since I now have a "post baby body") and worked my way up to bigger or more sentimental items (namely baby stuff). I have to say that I was blown away by how emotional the process was. I really was surprised at how hard the decision to give an item that "I might need one day" away was. I hadn't used the item recently (some items I hadn't used in ten years!), but somehow I felt an emotional pull to an item that did nothing but create clutter. I had a realization along the way that my view of earthly possessions had become skewed from what I knew it should be. In Luke 12:34 and again Matthew 6:21 we find an account of the words spoken by Jesus, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I realized it was time to evaluate where my heart was. I've always thought if it's in the Bible once, it is important, but if it makes an appearance multiple times...now come on...it MUST be extra important, right??? What is it that I should teach my daughter to believe - can she see that I believe that thing through my actions??? Now I'm not going to say I'm anywhere close to where I want to be in my view of possessions and my additude about prioritizing items of value, but I'm making progress. Our house is on the market again and I'm proud to say that although we have a few items in my In-Law's extra bedroom and we have a loaded attic, we don't have a storage unit!!! I'm so greatful that God has provided the house that we live in now. We would love to move to a new location, but if that's not in God's plan for us, I'm ok with that. I wanted to share a couple of the resources that I found that really help me work through this organization process (I originally typed "helped", then went back and deleted the "ed" because this isn't something that you just do once - it is a continual process).
HERE - This lady is an organizational genius in my book!!!
HERE - This guy's view on Miminalism is incredibly enlightening. I follow him on twitter and love his blog!
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