I just realized how much time I have lost over the years accumulating, accounting for, and taking care of my possessions. It's not that I have a lot comparatively speaking. It is just I have a lot compared to the space I have to store it in. And the truth is I don't really need that much. I am convinced that we have all been brainwashed to accumulate stuff. Much of which is of little value, function, or beauty. It is...well...just stuff. For example, I cleaned out my closet and found I had twenty six purses. Twenty six! What can one person do with twenty six purses? Of those twenty six purses I use two. Yes I take up a 2 X 3 foot space in my closet to store purses. It is discusting. I am embarased. However when I tried to donate them my mind could not get my hands to drop the garbage bag full into the donation box. My rational as I drove back home with them is: I spent at least $40.00 per handbag and I need to at least make an attempt to use them before wasting $960.00 on handbags I never use. I just need to get in the habit of rotating them I tell myself. It has now been six months since I brought the purses back into the closet. I still have not used them. I wrapped them in tissue paper and placed them in nice white boxes (a trick I learned from a consignment store owner) and took them to local consignment shops and if I am lucky I will at least make a couple of dollars off them. If they don't sell I am now determined to donate them to a local woman's shelter and write it off on my taxes. I want the freedom of my closet and two purses are simply enough. I have done the same thing with the forty pairs of shoes I owned. I am now down to twenty and even that seems rediculous. How many people in the world own twenty pairs of shoes? My goal to is get down to ten pair of shoes (and only because I have so many different activities) hiking boots, running shoes, house slippers, black pumps, boots, clogs, brown pumps, boots, clogs, sandals, flip flops. Are flip flops considered shoes? Is it only Americans who have to wrestle with letting go of stuff? When I see my fashion concious friends strutting around in their craolya crayon box of colors of shoes I have to admit I am envious. But what is it really that I am envious of? How did more stuff become the standard to which I determined my beauty or my value?
