Decluttering Life

I have lived in my current home for thirty years! That is a long time, and every year my wife and I spend a fair amount of time going room to room purging stuff we don’t really need. It feels like it is Groundhog Day every year! The rinse-and-repeat cycle not only gets monotonous but also frustrating. As soon as we take another load to the Habitat resale store, I find myself quickly falling back into my routine of looking on Amazon for the next thing I think I need. Thanks, Jeff Bezos, ugh!

Another snag I have run into is figuring out what to do with what I’ve deemed “important papers.”  This is everything from tax records to scrapbooks, photographs, newspaper articles, and copies of the hundred-plus articles I wrote for Lost Treasure Magazine. I have at least a dozen record storage boxes that contain “my life story.”

Ok, there are rules and regulations for tax stuff, I understand that. But what about all the other stuff? On the one hand, the logical side of my brain says to save stuff you have a real emotional attachment to, but pitch the rest of the crap because it is just clutter and taking up space, and no one cares about it. I think the older you get the less life energy you have and the more people tend to ignore the obvious and just shrug their shoulders and figure that their children or nieces and nephews will just have to deal with it.

Regardless, all this set me on a path to ask the question; What would God say about all this, and I found Ecclesiastes 1:11 “There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.” Likewise, reading further in Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.”

That is pretty sobering, but it does put things into perspective. Now I understand this is not saying my life or everyone’s life is meaningless, but it does make you think more than a moment about where you place your priorities. (Matt. 6:19–21) and (Prov. 22:1).

Hopefully, this give you something to ponder if your facing some of the same challenges. Until next time, take care!

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