I have been known to horde over the years, especially when I was teaching preschool because you never knew when 150 juice lids or 50 toilet paper rolls could be used for a craft project and it does take awhile to save up that many. I have mended my ways in regards to those items but with having a few kids I feel I'm hoarding in a different way. Clothes, for one and shoes. I save the strangest things sometimes. I have about 40 Rubbermaid tubs in my basement with clothes for various sizes, for babies, girl or boy, maternity, winter sweaters, etc. But,.......one thing I have learned with the youngest children is that I keep getting things given to me and I can go a whole year and not look in the tubs for the size of a particular kid because they have way more clothes in their drawers than they need. The problem I am having right now is the overflow. As I clean out each child's clothes for each season I put the "to keep" clothes downstairs in the tub room and guess what?...... they don't get put in tubs for several months. I'm tripping on things down there and can't find a thing.
This thinking is coming from catching an Oprah show this week on a women who hoarded so much stuff that it was piled in every single room in her house to the ceiling. She hadn't used her dining room for 12 years, her 5 year old grandson had never been to her house because there wasn't any room. They hadn't seen their furniture for years. They didn't even spend much time there anymore. I can't quite relate because the upstairs is as neat as I can get it with 9 people in the house. I don't like clutter around me so I am always putting something away but if it is an area I can't see, well....it does get away from me. So, my goal this week or month is to throw away all the workbooks and notebooks from the last 12 years of school. But, if you are like me, you open your oldest child's first handwriting book and go ohhhhh, this is so sweet, put this back downstairs and I'll find something else to throw right now. It will take me awhile to adjust mentally to this process much like the lady on Oprah I saw who cried much of the time. It was hard to let go of such a way of life. One motivation is to train my kids not to put so much stock in stuff and having as much as you can. It slows you down. It takes time away from family to always have to reorganize it and clean it and if God called me to leave this home to mission work somewhere it would take me a year just to clean out the place.
I know there is a verse that talks about this world is not my home. Obtaining things can be considered worldliness. I am so guilty of thinking of this too often. If only this was redone, I'd be happy, if only this was clean and orderly. 1 John 2:15-17 says"Do not love the world or anything in the world.........The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever."
2 comments:
Here is a tip on the workbook. Save the best pages(not books) from each 1st book for each child. And with pictures of them from that age make a scrap book it will make throwing away the rest of the book easier! and you will have a record of each of kids first writings. Just put all the torn pages into a folder and lable put in the file cabniet untill you are ready to scrapbook :)
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