Want to bring a little space to any home? Well, get rid of the junk and improve the home by bearing down and making a decision that the accumulated ’stuff’ that has built up over a lifetime can actually be allowed to shuffle off this mortal coil. For instance, take a look at the wet dry vacuum that once worked but which now sits alone, in a corner and neglected by one and all.
It just might be that the vacuum could come in handy someday as an emergency backup for the new one we bought long ago or perhaps we’re thinking like NASA does when it comes to the space shuttle and extra computers and such. Redundancy can be important, especially when the basement floods and the big new vacuum we have just can’t handle the load by itself, though we know the real truth of things.
Maintaining that particular line of reasoning, take a moment to go into the garage and get a look at all of the stuff that’s been accumulating in our lives for many years. Over in the corner sits a pair of garden blowers that were once top-notch but which are now, just like the vacuum, neglected and ill used. Chances are good that we haven’t use them for years but they aren’t going anywhere, right?
Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that those blowers will be needed once some crisis comes along and we need an emergency garden to be grown or the gardeners we’ve hired are going on strike against us for better tasting lemonade, perhaps. Whatever the reason we just don’t want to see any of this stuff gone, though we probably will never use it again, either in this world or in the next.
As an example of this particular line of thinking, take a moment to remember that gleaming chrome-plated motorcycle that was once a proud occupant of the driveway out front. It was sold off a long time ago to help pay for the baby’s nursery and there doesn’t seem a chance that the bike will be coming back anytime soon, though the full face helmet we used to ride it is still hanging around in the house.
Of course, if one were being logical, the helmet would have been gone long ago but maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that we aren’t totally the domesticated beasts we really are. In fact, there’s a good chance that a replacement bike is just over the horizon, maybe 20 or so years from now when the girls are safely through college. There it will be, in the driveway, waiting to be ridden.
It’s possible, though highly unlikely, that this scenario could play itself out. The truth is; we love our stuff no matter what that ’stuff’ is. It might be something that connects us to our past, but if we want a little less clutter in our life we need to get rid of the junk and improve the home at the same time. It might be easy or it might be hard, but it probably needs to be done eventually.