stuff

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My Stuff Has A Diabolical Plan To Take Over My Life

It’s not hard to grasp how easily stuff can pile up and become a problem.

my stuff has a diabolical plan to take over my life

We’ve probably all seen those shows about hoarders. People who only have paths through their homes because their stuff is piled up in every room.

It certainly hasn’t come to that in our home, but I’m seeing how stuff can begin to take over. I’d like to say it’s just at home, but honestly stuff is spilling over at my office as well. 

Some people are naturally neat. They just put things away after they use them. They have a place for everything and it always goes back there. It’s possible that these people have attained to a higher state of being than the rest of us, but it’s more likely that they have other issues that compel them to do what they do. 

For me it happens slowly, one thing at a time. The clutter begins when one thing doesn’t have a place or I don’t have time to put something away. 

I’m not making excuses here, just observations. 

Once one thing doesn’t get back to where it belongs, it kind of opens the door for more things to hang out where they don’t belong. 

In my office, it starts when I don’t know where to put a piece of paper. I realize I’ll need it later so I leave it out as a visible reminder. 

Sometimes I don’t have a file for it or know what I would file it under. The end result is it stays on my desk … and the pile or piles begin. 

On my computer, I’m sometimes in a hurry and don’t put documents I’m working on in a folder … which means they sit on my desktop. Before too long my desktop is filled with un-filed documents, pictures, pdfs and more.

Because one piece of paper or one document doesn’t look messy, you don’t see the disaster that is coming. 

Right now I’m looking at my family room and there is an amplifier for my son’s guitar sitting in a corner. … My son hasn’t lived here for six years, plus he now has an apartment-sized amp for his guitar. 

I originally thought that I might plug my acoustic guitar into it, but that has only happened a few times in those six years. So there it sits and, on top of it, a mic and a few cords. 

That’s just one thing. 

As I scan the room, there are several things – my stuff – that need to be put away, disposed of in some way, or I need to find a place to store them. 

And then there is my roll top desk. That is where I secretly hoard old computer stuff. In this secret place I have hidden away hard drives, cords, cables, disks, CD’s and many things that can’t even plug into a computer anymore. 

If my roll top desk is ever opened up, I am concerned that it would take over the whole basement and I would be left walking on paths to get around my stuff.

Here’s the thing: Not only can we keep physical things hanging around so that they pile up in our homes, we can also keep hurts, sin, unforgiveness and anger piled up in our lives. Just like you have to take action to clear the clutter from your computer, you must take action with the stuff that builds up in your life. The best way to deal with all that is to take it to God and allow Him to help you get your life uncluttered. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you most need to un-clutter right now? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Our Stuff Doesn’t Last As Long Anymore

Things don’t last as long as they once did. We also don’t try as hard to make them last.

This is particularly true with clothes … and many other things.

When I was a kid, I remember my mom would sew my ripped jeans at the knee. Sure, I had a stitch line that looked like a crease going across my knee, but I would get more time in those jeans.  

Mom also had some iron-on patches and sometimes, if the rip or the hole was too big to sew together, she would iron on a patch. 

The patch usually was a close, but not exact, match. It was really noticeable that I had a hole in those pants. But, hey, at least my skin wasn’t showing through. 

Nowadays we extend the life of jeans by just wearing the ripped skin-showing hole or holes in the knee. … Some pants already come that way. 

Years back there was a progression with pants. They would get sewn, then patched. When the patch started to lose its grip and begin to flap, Mom would cut those jeans off above the knee and you’d have a pair of shorts to wear. 

You really could get a lot of wear out of a pair of pants back then.  

Not so much now. 

My favourite jeans have a hole in them. I just noticed it. It’s going to get bigger too, so time is running out on these good ol’ pants of mine.

They seem to be coming to an end far too quickly, and the rip isn’t even in the knee. 

The hole in my pants is developing in my back pocket. It’s where I keep my wallet. 

It’s not that I carry huge amounts of cash in my wallet or that I have three inches of credit cards and identification back there either. It’s just that I have a hard case for my credit cards and a billfold with pointy edges. 

That combo creates extensive friction against my pants pocket and, though from the front the pants look fine, my right back pocket is starting to look like a real mess. 

It’s not fashionable yet, and I can’t cut them off at the pocket either. Sewing and patches? Well, I don’t think that style is ever coming back. It’s time to start looking for new jeans. 

I’m looking forward to the day when I won’t have to carry credit cards or cash with me. I do make many purchases electronically from my watch, but if we went cashless, if that became more fashionable, my pockets wouldn’t wear out and I could wear my favourite jeans for years. 

There is one thing that might save my jeans: it’s called darning. Some of you have never heard of the word … because nobody does it any more. 

When I was a kid, if you got a hole in your socks, your mom would say, “ah darn”, and then she would take needle and wool and close up the hole. 

My back pocket hole is darn-able; it’s not that big. I even said “darn” the first time I discovered it. Maybe I’ll bring back darning. 

… Not the word, just the fixing hole part. 

Here’s the thing: When it comes to relationships, we often don’t put effort into keeping relationships that are in need of repair. We just move on. Even with the Lord, we can be guilty of not trying hard to keep up our relationship. All relationships are worth it – especially your relationship with Christ. So do what you need to do to preserve, repair or fix your relationship with God.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What relationship needs repair in your life? Leave your comments below.

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We’ve Reached Our Limit

I think we may have reached the limit of what we can put in our house.

Have you ever tried to stuff one more thing into a box but then couldn’t close the lid? You move the things around in the box to get a better fit but, in the end, there’s still one too many things in the box.

We do that every year when we fill our Samaritan’s Purse Christmas Shoe boxes. 

I know we’re not the only ones because I see lots of boxes coming back with elastic bands around them to keep the lids closed.

We all must have some urge in us to stuff those boxes beyond full. 

We know that water has a saturation point. You can put salt in water and it will dissolve, but if you add in too much salt, you will reach the saturation point and see salt at the bottom of the pot. 

I wonder if we can do that with a house?

Is it possible to put one too many things in a house so that it reaches its maximum capacity and there is no more room? 

We know hoarders do that. I once saw a show on TV where they took a camera crew through the house of a hoarder. There was stuff piled almost to the ceiling with only paths through the house from one room to another.

But long before we get to that stage, I think it’s possible to have one too many things that you just can’t fit into your house without it lying out in the open … with no real place for it to belong, with nowhere for you to tuck it away.

My fear is we have reached that place in our home. We were billeting a few teens this past week, and naturally we wanted to clean things up. 

We are also making some changes to our exercise room, which means we need to find some new places to put things. 

As I was surveying the collateral piles of stuff that needed to be put away somewhere, I thought, “I don’t think we have a place to put everything.” 

We have more than one thing too many for our house. When I think about it, we have a lot of stuff. 

I’ve thrown out the things I don’t want, and the paper that should have been disposed of years ago. But I don’t know where to put some things that I want to keep more for sentimental reasons than to be used. 

Among the things that I want to keep is a VCR. We don’t use it any more but I have some video tapes that I would like to convert to digital some day. So how can I get rid of it? 

The problem is we seem to have reached the saturation point in our house and we have no more closet space, crawl space, storage areas, or drawers to put things in.

One thing is for sure – we have to get a lid on all this stuff … today!

Here’s the thing: We try to keep a lid on emotions, our thoughts and, yes, our sins. We stuff them into places that we don’t really notice at first and refuse to look at later when they get more visible. Just like a box, or even a home, you can get to the place where you can’t put the lid on anymore. Your stuff is going to spill out. Way before you get to that place, do something about it: give it to God; seek a friend to help you; sort out your inner junk. Deal with it now rather than later.

That’s Life! 

Paul

Question: What is cluttering your inner self right now? Leave your comments below.

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Why Comparing Will Result In Renting A Storage Unit

This morning my wife went for a walk. When she returned, she commented on how many garage sales were happening in our neighbourhood.

moms-storage-unit

I casually asked her if she saw anything she wanted and she quickly responded with, “Look around! We could have five garage sales with all the stuff we have here! What do we need with more?!”

That statement stuck with me. I don’t usually think we have a lot. In fact, compared to other people, we don’t have that much. … But that’s the problem right there!

That’s why there are so many garage sales. That’s why most homes in North America could have a garage sale every week.

We compare. And when we compare, we often compare with those who have more, not less.

So compared to the guy down the street, I don’t have all that he has … so yes, I do need a riding lawnmower.

However, if we didn’t compare ourselves to others, if we just evaluated our own situations in terms of what we needed, we probably wouldn’t be checking out garage sales – we would be hosting them.

Most of us collect things. We need storage bins and closets and lockers and garages to house all the stuff we collect. Many people can’t park their car(s) in their garages because they’re too full of their things.

They might not use those things any more, but they have them just in case.

When I was growing up, we didn’t have a garage. In winter we would have to brush the snow off the car and scrape the windows. Since I’ve been a homeowner, we’ve had garages and I have been determined to use those garages for my cars.

That alone has kept us from collecting a few things we didn’t need. When in doubt, we’ve always asked, “Where would we put that?”, and the garage is always off limits.

Self Storage in the U.S. is a six billion dollar business, and we’ve all seen the kinds of useless junk that people put in them from shows like “Storage Wars” and “Auction Hunters”.

There is another factor that adds to this problem and it’s that we don’t just want more, we want new. We compare what we have with the latest styles or colours or trends. We feel we need to update our stuff.

We just put the old into storage – like my tie collection … Who knows? Maybe my fat, colourful Fred Flintstone tie will come back into fashion … Was it ever in fashion?

So we go to garage sales and we have garage sales because, when we compare, we need more and the old stuff we have needs to be replaced with the latest stuff.

Who’s in control here? Certainly not us.

… Maybe we need to make a trip to Bibles for Missions with a load or two of stuff.

Here’s the thing: When we compare, we usually compare against something better or new and we always come out on the losing end, causing us to want more or feel we need to update. Spiritually, we compare ourselves against the Bible, against God’s standards. And unlike the comparisons we do in our society where the targets are always changing, God’s standard stays the same. So stick to God’s standard, and you won’t collect excess baggage or be mesmerized by the trends.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How much stuff could you contribute to a garage sale or a store like Bibles for Missions? Leave your comment below.