Stuff, stuff, stuff

A sting of anxiety. Pit in my stomach. Heavy sigh. I have so many possessions. I lived for a year with so much less and I was surprisingly so content. I've tried to hold off as long as possible, but this week we began to shuffle through our stored items and revisit our possessions that we packed away neatly over a year ago, which were only a distant memory before...

this is only some of our stuff packed away in a garage

David attempting not to create an avalanche

shoes, shoes, shoes

When we moved to Guatemala we stuffed 4 suitcases with the essentials (probably should have rethought the 15 books which were too heavy) and said good-bye to the majority of our stuff. We took older clothes: nothing new, nothing fancy, nothing expensive. Sure, we acquired things while we were down there. Volunteers who came down would give us their leftover clothes and we happily used them until we returned to the US. But I was so easily content with the few, the old, the re-used, and the simple. Not to mention I had no room to pack make-up, I only blow dried my hair 3 times the whole year, and hair conditioner was a rare treat. It was easy to live simply there. We couldn't fit a lot of things into our apartment. If we had too much stuff and didn't use it frequently enough, it would grow mold within a week during the rainy season.

This week we began to go through all of our old stuff. What blows my mind is that I lived for a year without any of these things and I was happy and content, probably more stress-free than I've ever been (in regards to stuff). But what scares me the most is that all of these possessions won't be enough. In no time I'll find something else that I "need" to buy. Which, we all know I won't need, but I will find a way to justify it. I will purchase it at Goodwill for really cheap, and it will help alleviate any tension. But, as author Jen Hatmaker writes in 7, "I would like to be so focused on the valuable that what I am wearing doesn't even warrant mental space." How incredible would that be?!

Jen continues about how we justify each individual purchase: "This micro-justification easily translates to nearly every purchase I've made. Alone, each item is reduced to an easy explanation, a harmless transaction. But all together we've spent enough to irrevocably change the lives of a hundred thousand people...What if all my silly little individual purchases do matter? What if I joined a different movement, one that was less enticed by luxuries and more interested in justice? What if I believed every dollar spent is vital, a potential soldier in the war on inequality?"

I know that having a closet, or garage, or basement packed with stuff doesn't make me a bad person. But I don't want to want all of that. I don't want to feel like I "need" more things to be content or happy or accepted. I want to have a healthy, detached perspective on things, and I already find that increasingly more difficult here. I want to focus on the big picture: my purchases do matter, every dollar spent is my vote that is directly connected to the world I take part in creating.