Monday, March 11, 2013

The Purge Project - Bigger Life, Fewer Things

     Minimalist living:  one member of my extended family has it down to a science when it comes to living minimally.  After their kids grew up and moved out, they finally ended up in a condo that is all of about 950 square feet.  They live well in that space and everything is functional without a single superfluous item to be found anywhere.  There is a place for everything and everything is in its place.  It is relaxing and simply lovely to be in their home.  Could you imagine purging enough stuff to fit all of your worldly possessions into a much smaller space? Most of us would have quite a bit of difficulty parting with so many of our possessions. 

       A couple of weeks ago, our pastor gave a sermon about financial responsibility and used Matthew 6:19 as one of the focal verses.  "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  Matt 6:19.  He asked one question that has stuck in my head ever since about the successful public storage industry here in the US.  "Why do we continually store more things that we may pay extra to store some other place because we don't want anyone else to have them?"  I had never heard it phrased exactly that way before and the last clause ..."because we don't want anyone else to have them"... really grabbed me.  I immediately thought about my overstuffed linen closet and garage and the conviction fell heavily upon me.  Why should I keep all this stuff?  Some of it has not been used in years.  Why shouldn't somebody else benefit from it?

       Clutter is draining.  Having too much stuff  wastes our time and prevents others from benefiting from the use of those items that we keep stashed away in storage areas where they remain for years, often forgotten.  In upcoming posts as I mentioned while on vacation, I will start a series this week that I'm going to call "Purge Project" where I will go throughout my house and systematically purge, donate, toss, and organize the contents of some of my more excessive living spaces in an effort to reduce the amount of useless stuff we have and show you all the finished results along the way.

     Join me in this project and submit pics and links of your own organizational efforts.  This week, I'll be starting in the linen closet and will post before and after pics of how I organized it and got rid of all the excess.

Jump to next post in the series.


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