The Danger of Things

The size of our home is a built in limitation to the accumulation of things, as is the complete lack of closet space, and the shed's tendency to damage fabric, paper, and cardboard boxes.  Most things don't store well for us, so we don't tend to keep them. Add to that our sense of aesthetics and Luba's love of destruction, and we end up without  too much of an attachment to our possessions. But babies, generous friends, and the many gadgets available in the "off-grid" community complicate things.

Last Sunday, our priest spoke on detachment from the material, on creating a life that pursued the essentials. Thanks to him, the ideas I've been playing with for months, and the urge to purge our home and shed (especially the shed) of extras are becoming clearer and are being put into action. Tied up in all of this is not just a putting into order of the house and the yard, but an ordering of life. Not in such a way as to get in the way of generosity, hospitality, joy, and spontaneity, but to encourage those things to flourish apart from the clutter and disorder of my sometimes too disjointed mind. Obviously, things of beauty stay, apart from that it's open season on our collection of helpful and not-so-helpful belongings. I know for certain that some boxes in the shed can be quickly discarded, as can many of the stumps that litter the yard. I'm looking forward to the process.