Too Much Stuff

Why Can’t We Let Go?

I touched upon my obsessiveness of always being prepared with “stuff” in my last post. I feel this post is a similar topic. I have been purging my house little by little for a couple of years now. As the kids grew up I let go of things I didn’t need anymore. (I’ve always been a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to saving things.) I’ve gotten rid of so much but as I look around my house now and It looks like I haven’t made a dent. Why do we need so much? Why do we save things? Why do we have a hard time letting go? Because we long to hold onto the past? Are we afraid of the future? I guess for everyone it’s a different reason, for me I think it’s nostalgia. It’s not that I long for the past, but I want to remember it, for my kids to remember it years down the road. I love that my mom saved a box of my artwork and school projects as far back as kindergarten. It makes me smile when I rummage through it.  But even though it’s wonderful boxes full of memories, it’s a box of stuff I don’t really need. I would love to go up to the attic and digitize most of it and then toss it all out. But then I’m torn with not dealing with it because, really, those are hours of my life I won’t get back. It’s going to take hours and hours I could be spending with my family, my friends. So in the end it all sits in my attic, my closets, my drawers etc. until a rainy or snowy day.  Someday I’ll tackle it, or my kids will end up doing after I’m gone and I don’t want that to be their burden. Otherwise they will wish me back so they can kill me!