I am decluttering the house, again. I did the bathroom and our bedroom last week, and I am focusing on the kids’ room this week. Yesterday, I did the major purge of everything on their floor, on and under the bed. So far we’ve discarded three big bags of trash. We had to get rid of things that have some value, but are not contributing to the home and physically getting in the way of living life.
Having too many things is a reoccurring issue for us. One of the hallmarks of hoarding is keeping extra items. They fill up and choke the space. In a time when we had less money, we clung to material possessions as a buffer against getting caught without. So we kept that tiny bit of leftover shampoo even though we bought more. We kept that hotel soap in case we ran out of the regular one before the end of the month. It meant our shower got cluttered with nearly empty bottles and drawers were spilling over with tiny soaps, too small to use.* It’s insidious.
The other reason we continued to cling to items is that we’re always trying to save up money, so any thing we don’t have to buy is a contribution to our goal. We’re practicing false poverty in order to get ahead. This idea is promoted by books and websites that encourage penny pinching as a way to spend less and save more. Frugality is good, but not at the expense of living your life. What’s the point of making money if you live like a pack rat? Saving can just be another form of hoarding.
Both of my grandmothers grew up poor; one hoarded items and the other hoarded money. Even though in her later years one had achieved financial stability, she still only ever bought the cheapest food and drink and was always super uptight about the lights and the heat. When we used to have land lines, all of her phone calls were cut short, because of not wanting to pay extra for long-distance. The worst part of it was she invested her hard-earned savings in the Lehman Brothers, which went down in the economic bust of 2008. My mom commented that if she had given it to her family while she was alive, she could’ve enjoyed watching it get spent.
I’m am doing this inventory not to judge, but to try understand the dynamics that are at play in our hearts and minds. Now that I realize why we’re keeping backups to our backups, maybe I can let stuff go quicker.
I love the Facebook Marketplace for getting rid of stuff. All you have to do is post that you have something free on your porch, and someone will come and take it away for you. No judgment. It’s a better way of living, just taking what you need and sharing anything extra. That way, you both can have what you need and the things you own don’t own you.
It’s a trust issue too. If we really trusted God, then we can trust that he’ll provide what we need for tomorrow as well as today. Spiritually, hanging onto things from the past is a kind of hoarding. Jesus brings salvation through forgiveness of sins, so we don’t have to keep trying to earn love. If we can accept this forgiveness, we also extend it to others. Apparently it’s really hard to accept because we keep trying to go back and be righteous by works. We want a backup for God’s forgiveness. In case Jesus’s forgiveness doesn’t actually save me, I have my personal perfection fall back on. Because of our inability to let go of our own failures, we need to hang on to other’s as well. It’s insidious.
Being good should should come from love and not a false poverty mentality. There is enough grace for everyone. We are carrying three garbage bags that we should leave at the cross, one of our sins, one of our acts of righteousness and one resentment we hold towards others. When we let go, we can be free and live our lives to the fullest and be generous with others as well.
*After my father passed, I found a box of pencils marked “pencils too small to use.” He collected used pencils from the end of the school year, sharpened them and kept them in neat, little bundles in a box—for decades. If anyone required a pencil, he would give them one of his tiny golf-sized writing implements.
