The “Stuff” of Life Now that our children have left home I have discovered the amazing economy of perpetual “stuff.” Let me explain how it works. When we leave home as young adults, our parents give us their old furniture so we will have a place to sit, sleep and eat. Then we start collecting a few things of our own. We become garage sale connoisseurs and when people say they have some junk to give away we say, “Yea, I can use that!” As the years pass and we move through stages in our lives, we box up what we don’t need, but eventually we run out of space and decide it is time to start a cleansing process. This is no small task, since more new stuff seems to come into our house as fast as we get rid of the old stuff. We give it away, throw it away, and hold a few garage sales of our own. When our children launch out on their own, we pass along old furniture, which might be the same old furniture our parents gave us, and insist they go through everything in our house that belongs to them and haul it away. Progress! Then the unexpected happens. Our parents, who have been secretly storing a few boxes of their own, decide to liquidate, and the shelves we have spent the better part of our lives trying to empty start filling up with dishes, pictures and a host of family heirlooms. What selfrespecting child can tell a parent he can’t take care of family heirlooms? So, is there ever a time when we completely rid ourselves of clutter and live in a home where we actually use everything we have? Yes! It will happen on the day we also decide to liquidate and invite our children over so we can put a “few things” in their car. Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a bit. Still, I have made a promise to myself. I am done storing things in boxes. If it can’t be used, I don’t want it. For example, when I was a young man, I bought toy die-cast cars and kept them in their original packaging. I figured they would be worth something someday, especially if they were unopened. But when I turned forty, I had a change of heart. I started giving my unopened cars away to kids and laughed when they tore them open. Also, as a matter of principle, I now have a tradition of buying a new toy car on my birthday, bringing it home, ripping the package open, and rolling it across our dining room table…but not at dinner. I don’t intend to trivialize the value of true collectibles, and if I had a known treasure, I would certainly hang on to it. Did you know there are some unopened cereal boxes worth over $1500.00? And all of my life I have heard about that rare Mickey Mantle baseball card everyone’s mother accidentally sold in a garage sale. Some old stuff is worth hanging onto, or at least selling to the highest bidder. I just don’t want to come to the end of my days and realize I have failed to enjoy life because I had it all boxed up on a shelf in the garage. I also don’t want to hoard things that could bring joy into the lives of others.

There is a Proverb that encourages us not to be obsessed with possessions because “they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle” (Proverbs 23:5). Such is the “stuff” of life, and I for one am tired of trying to find a place to put it.