TOO MUCH STUFF!!!

I’m just spazzing out to the max about all the crap we have in our possession

I need help. I’m not kidding, I really need help. I need someone to ease my pain (loose ‘Field of Dreams” reference) or someone to tell me how to take it away myself or be okay with it. Whatever the solution, I NEED a solution! We have too damn much stuff (sorry about the cussing I know I said I was going to cut that out).

Some of you may know we recently relocated our household to a duplex while we build a house. We took what I consider the majority (this is currently in dispute) of the contents of our 4,000-ish square foot home and crammed it into a 1,200 square foot duplex and a 10’x10’ storage unit. I have to tell you, some days I just want to start grabbing boxes and throwing it all away.

Maybe I’m getting old and crotchety and a little wiggy but this stuff really bothers me. I know that some of it is worth keeping. Certainly I don’t want to throw away old photo albums or videos of the kids or even keepsakes from our grandparents but we have to find some metric, some way of paring this down. In fact, I’d be willing to pay someone to come into our place and, with an ironclad set of guidelines or decision flowchart (there I go dating myself) to go through all our stuff and get rid of at least a third of it; because it really is just a bunch of stuff. I just don’t know how to put together that darn flowchart.

I shudder to think of what the questions would have to be to bring me to a conclusion of whether to keep or toss something. Are they based on if I’ve used it in the past six months to a year? This seems like too steep a curve (what about Christmas decorations?) although it might be one that’s very accurate. Do I ask myself if the item brings me joy? Truthfully, I find joy in some odd, non-usable crap so I think this bar is too low. How do we decide what stays and what goes? Or, do we/I somehow learn to be okay with having more than we’ll ever need, more than we’ll ever want and more than we’ll ever use? Can an old, crotchety fart learn a new trick?

Maybe I just need to lighten up, have a beer and embrace the clutter (although I vowed to end that clutter many Thursdays ago). Come to think of it, I resolved to give up beer quite a while back too. Maybe the problem is me. Maybe I’ve gotten such a stick up my backside I can’t relax enough to just go with it. Maybe I need some good drugs (I haven’t decided to give those up, probably because I don’t do them). Could it be that I’m needlessly getting hung up on having all this stuff? When you ponder it for a while it’s clear it’s not really hurting me. The stuff just hangs around in all its little boxes in my basement. (I haven’t counted them yet but my OCD personality really, really wants to so it can fuel my angst) Truth be told, we can afford to have someone move them when we’re in the new place. Our stuff is sure to look less numerous when we have more room.

Eureka! That’s it! We’ll just build a big house!!

You may think I’m just ranting about all this stuff but I’m dead serious. If you can offer a solution please post a comment (I’ll try anything). If you know someone who needs a nudge toward purging or maybe would find amusement in my dilemma, please pass this along.

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