Decluttering is a spiritual discipline. It’s taken me turning fifty to realize that.
Why did it take me so long? Why did I struggle with this?
Clearing away my possessions was never easy for me. Not just to clear them but to actually pack up what I no longer had any use for and give them away.
Looking back now, after a major decluttering session, I can finally admit that it’s because I wanted to show people that I had certain things. Things they might not have, even though I’d outgrown it or it wasn’t something I’d use, I’d still buy and keep it in the hope that someday, when we’d built our house I’d display them.
The dream of a new house is there but the finance and the material isn’t. Meanwhile, things, stuff accumulates. What to do when space run out but to clean up and clean them out.
The clean up yielded five cartons of books, separated into non-fiction (memoirs, Christian non-fiction, and psychology/self-help) and fiction (from my favourite authors Agatha Christie, Ellis Peters, Ian Rankin and poetry books), and about as many cartons of odds and ends that I’m determined to look through next weekend. I’m scheduling a thorough look through my wardrobe over the next few days because that’s also where I’m guilty of buying in excess.
It’s not only pride that kept me hoarding things but the thought I might need them one day. That elusive day. Things gather dust, cause more work and take up space.
Reading up on decluttering led me to a few good sites and the occasional YouTube videos on minimalism. As I try to follow Yeshua’s example, I find that His was a minimalist existence as far as material things went. Him not owning anything might seem austere and extreme but then He came from Heaven and He owns everything.
Can you imagine having that mindset, that perspective, that since our Heavenly Father owns everything, we don’t have to hoard things and we can be free to give things away? Perhaps we can be smarter and not buy things we don’t need, will never use? Better distinguish between our needs and wants.
Follow our ultimate role model, our Lord and Saviour, Yeshua Hamashiach Himself.
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