I’m currently living in the month of letting go. Right now I want to weigh in (for what may end up being a few posts) about letting go of material things.

Every day I take a picture of something.  On the way home from work the other day I took a picture of:

The morning drive on that same day is what made me take the picture and inspired this post. En route to work, which is about 13 miles, I counted four storage sites, three of which were of the above.  The franchise isn’t important, but what is important to me or at least interesting is that about every three miles there is a place where you can take your stuff and store it for a small monthly fee of course. Why on earth are there so many? Because we have too much stuff.

How does it happen? Here’s a few scenarios: Our home is full of stuff, we get tired of that stuff and get some new stuff. Not wanting to part with the old completely (because there’s not really anything wrong with it), we move the old stuff to storage with the intention of finding a permanent home somewhere else.  What happens though in some cases is that we end up paying to store this stuff and the storage facility ends up becoming the permanent home. (been there, done that and ended up selling the stuff). Another scenario is when we’re making a move, either across country or across town. Having not settled into the new space for whatever reason we again (temporarily) store stuff until we are settled and again there are times when this temporary situation becomes permanent.   The stuff may even be forgotten and ultimately auctioned (yes I have been to a storage stuff auction). Why do we even go there?

For a few reasons: 1)stuff makes us feel good. The more stuff we have, the more we feel (falsely) that we are secure, successful, attractive etc.; 2)we’re unable to recognize when we have enough even though it falls on our heads or we stub our toes on it in the middle of the night; 3)marketers say and we believe that we need the next, new, shiny thing in order to experience #1 above; 4) and this is serious, we may have a mental illness—depression, hoarding etc.  The good news is, that all of these even #4 are rectifiable. They can all be overcome.

I personally want to overcome my need for stuff.  I’ve come a long way by necessity (lack of money, lack of space, burglary) and by choice.  The choice I’ve made is to be more conscious.  Do I use what I have, do I need what I have or am I attaching something to it in order to allow it to stay? As for things that I want to introduce into my space the consciousness comes in the form of these questions, do I already have something that serves the purpose? Am I being blinded by the “shiny”, does it serve more than one purpose, etc?  Being conscious isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to “weak spots” those things that I “love” or when there is stress involved.  Stress is especially dangerous because it can make for a bad or regrettable decision.  That said, for me letting go of stuff and being conscious of stuff is a work in progress.  However I don’t believe that it will be for the rest of my existence here on the ground.  I believe that there will come a time that the simplicity, the wealth of space and air resulting from letting go of stuff, will make living with what remains, easy.

Do you have stuff? Do you have stuff in a storage space or piled up in your home? Maybe it’s time to let it go. Think about it and feel free to share your thoughts and experiences here.