Too Much Stuff!

After a few weeks of cold weather, Cody is warming to the 70's and 80's for the rest of the week.  There is still time to brush those fall leaves off the table and enjoy meals outside again...

I can remember the day that my parents told me that my grandmother (we called her Nanny) and grandfather (Grampy) were going to move from the house that they lived in ever since I could remember, into a house much smaller.  I remember Nanny saying that her house was too much to take care of at this stage in her life. 

Now, I loved that house.  I can still see the swing under the apple tree in the back yard, the deer that would come through checking out the garden.  I remember that the bottom floor of that house always smelled like apples...I can smell it in my mind to this day.  I remember thinking that they were making a terrible mistake, because some things were just worth working for.  I thought maybe the move was because Nanny had such exacting standards of housekeeping...

Now, I am in my 50's and I know better.  Nanny must have been pooped!  Although we did not use the word back then, Nanny and Gramps were downsizing!

Somewhere in your 50's, when your children are on their own and it is just your husband and yourself, you get tired of caring for belongings...and rooms...that you no longer use.  You start to realize that life on this earth is not endless, and do you really want to spend your remaining time and precious energy cleaning and caretaking things that you probably won't use anymore?  In Ecclesiastes 3:1 the Bible says,

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

and verse 6 states:

"A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;"

Guess what, folks?  I think I have hit my time to cast away.  Each day I have a goal, and that is to fill up a plastic trash bag with belongings that I no longer find to be useful or beautiful, and I am giving away what is still usable, and throwing away what is not.  I am ruthless...if I have not used that vase in 5 years than it is history.  The wooden rocker with the broken arm that I thought maybe I would get fixed is gone, along with kitchen gadgets that I never used and books that I cared to read once, (and once was enough). Stuff that I have been storing for the kids I am in the process of packing off to them.

I can't tell you how good this is making me feel.  I am bringing order to closets and drawers, and I have room now for items that I treasure or still use.  I feel lighter somehow...probably the way Nanny did when she downsized and knew that she was no longer the caretaker of stuff that no longer fit her life.  Now there is more space in my life, more time to spend having coffee with a friend, or watching my grandchild.  I am not ready to downsize to the point where I sell this creaky old house...yet... but the day will probably come when I realize that, like Nanny, it is just too much for me.  And that doesn't scare me the way it used to.  There is a time 'for every purpose under heaven'.

All this to say to you younger woman readers...the seasons in your life will change.  Change is hard for a lot of people, especially me.  But when you embrace the change, it can be freeing.  And a lot less cluttered!

I am excited about my 'time to cast away'.  If you get a chance, read Ecclesiastes 3 and try to figure out what season you are in, going into...or heading out of.  And know that whatever the season, God will be there with you.  Everything else in your life will change, but God never does.  His constancy will anchor you in the shifting sands of the seasons of your life.  DLB