A flood, a bird, an epiphany?

It all started when the Colorado downpours saturated the ground and created a moat around my sister’s window well and then breached the “dam”.  As those things fill up with water, the windows have no chance. Water rushed in.

That was three weeks ago while I was there for a couple of days.  While my brother-in-law and I tried to keep the craziness to a minimum, furniture was moved and stuff shuffled around or more honestly, tossed aside. My sister works more hours than I knew were available in a week so the basement was already typical, American storage space and well, disorder. It was the classic- “One of those days I’m going to tackle the basement”.  Frankly, after the mini-flood the basement became complete chaos. One easy solution was to just close the basement door and think about it later.  Until the cat brought in a bird and proceeded to chase it around in said basement before dining on parts and leaving a carcass and lots of feathers.   The basement moved up the list of weekend chores.

The prospect of facing the clutter and the tossed aside furniture was too much. But life has a way of forcing us to confront our stuff- the exterior clutter and the interior confusion, as well.  So the last weekend I visited. my sister and I had a lovely bike ride planned but the furnace blew a thingy and poured smoke into the house and obviously needing tending.  Her husband, lovely man that he is, doesn’t do household crisis/repairs well on his own.  He’s a great cook and does his own laundry so that's a good tradeoff. Plus Janet knew an old acquaintance with a HVAC handy husband. “Sure, we’ll come by and look at it after the boy’s football game. Be great to see you. Etc.”

Hurrah!  Problem’s not solved but we’re no longer in the literal smokey haze of broken furnace with winter coming on.  But of course, the furnace.... is in the basement.

Long story short (too late, you say....)- we hauled a pile out of the basement. Several piles. All the office catalogs from a previous job, some rain soaked fiberboard, lots of paper work, knick-knacks earmarked to go to Goodwill that had snuck into the basement when her back was turned. And it’s always easier to really sort and pitch with a kind friend.  Or a bossy, older sister.  “Seriously, why do you have a catalog from 2009?”

So we arranged furniture, planned for a painting project and generally patted ourselves on the back. The next morning, after church and a nice big breakfast, I was reading the Sunday paper and came across Howard Mansfield’s article, “An American Dilemma: Your Clutter or Your Life.”

“It’s now 'physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing,” boasts the Self Storage Association. There are about 51,000 storage facilities in the country — more than four times the number of McDonald’s.   The storage shed is a symptom of our cluttered lives.  Clutter is the cholesterol of the home, it's clogging the hearth."

                                                                                               From The Denver Post / Oct 4, 2013

He goes on to make great observations on the toll that clutter takes on our lives, our peace of mind, our family time, our living time.  “Clutter is choking our shelters. Is there any room left for us in our houses?”

We agreed. We want to live simple. We want to have less, haul stuff away, give it away.  Janet said for every thing she brought into the house, a similar item had to leave. And we had really made a dent in the basement and had several boxes to  donate. We looked at each other and with one breathe we both exclaimed, “We should do a Goodwill run!”  We are incorrigible.  But off we went to search for pillows for the new basement plan and any other absolute treasures we "need". 

But on the way, we found a large bill board advertising a new business venture for her town, which is just south of metro Denver. 

“Occupying roughly 20 acres, Vehicle Vault will include twelve storage “condos” for collectors of high-end automobiles. They will have the ability to maintain and display their prized collections in a country club-like atmosphere, and have access to concierge services, waterless car washes and transportation for vehicles that can’t be driven.”

Yes, you read that right. Not only can all of America stand under the roof area of the millions of storage units where we store stuff we can’t fit into our houses, now you can buy a condo to store your car.  Now granted, these are high-end collectible cars. Not like Beanie Babies that failed to return on their promised investment value but real assets. Like you have in a bank. Or in a vault.  For cars

“Village at Vehicle Vault. Built to provide the elite car collector a place to keep and maintain their investments and share their passion with a like-minded community of car enthusiasts.”    http://www.vehiclevaultco.com/

We decided it was a high-class storage unit, the kind you could proudly open the doors and share with fellow hoarders, I mean enthusiasts.   We laughed, took pictures and proceeded to not just one but two Goodwills where we scored fabric for pillows and a pair of absolutely necessary black capris.  And a cute pair of  brand new shoes. Don't judge. 

So... not sure the moral, the lesson, even the point of all this.  It just felt very ironic to be motivated to go shopping after we emptied a space that had been full of clutter.  And driving by the construction site for yet another storage facility/ museum struck me as the height of irony in a culture that even has a word for simplicity. 

Either way the bird feathers are gone, the basement's cleaned, the furnace is being pondered and we had an epiphany.  I just forgot what it was. Maybe my mind’s a bit cluttered. 

Paring down, traveling light,.....whatever

I’m flew to Seattle today and my carefully packed carry-on went in the plane’s hold, checked at the gate.  I tried and could lift it over my head so I could have wrestled that thing into an overhead bin but why push the limits of my upper body strength.

Arrived!

And this week, going from Denver to  Seattle-
I took two umbrellas!

(Well, one was packed, one snuck in- that was the extra weight)

I had packed carefully- with three flights in a two-week trip I was determined not to pay an extra hundred dollars just to have more choices of clothes.  Of course, this trip includes cool, rainy Seattle and warm, practically-summer Waco, Texas.  So it took some creative clothing selection. Only two pairs of shoes, lots of layers and my sincere hope that my hosts will have down jackets or extra T-shirts if I’m desperate.

I was pretty content with my packing job until my sister opened her birthday package of raw coffee beans and insisted I add the cute burlap coffee bag from Panama to my stuffed carry-on.  A big burlap bag.  “Paul will love it. You need to take it to Seattle for him. Besides, I have enough stuff already.”

Don’t we all?  Have enough stuff...

When I moved West I shredded or tossed about a quarter of my possessions and gave away about another third.  It was hard but exhilarating, too.  I kept sorting and chucking, keeping only the essentials or things I really loved. I was going to travel light, live pared down, embrace simplicity in this new season of my life.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” 
― Confucius

Well, it’s been two years and I still haven’t unpacked all the boxes.

Why is it so hard to keep life simple?  I made good choices, I was generous with others as I gave my stuff away, I was sure I needed all that I kept.  But the fact is, I also filled in the gaps once I moved. I have a borderline-obsession/love of thrift stores.  “How could someone get rid of that? I need it.”  Sure the ten-dollar down comforters were a great idea and an amazing deal. But the collection of globes I’m accumulating?  Those I just wanted.  And I obviously wanted them more than I want simplicity.

But my wandering off the path of simplicity isn’t so obvious to me when I do it.  I have room for guests so that means towels, bedding, children’s toys,  heavy jackets for cool summer nights, hiking shoes in various sizes – just in case.  I have a fully equipped kitchen- for guests and I do eat. But I also have art supplies because I really want to get back to my art one of these days, when I have more time.  I have more books than I’ll ever read but they are good books and maybe the children will want them some day.  I heard that you can learn a lot about a person from their library and that the digital age could end the idea of a personal library heritage.  I want to leave a heritage of books. And art. And the stuff that says, "This is me." Or someday, "This was my mother, this was your Bebe, or your Gran-Bebe."

Ready for fun....
and almost organized. 

Ready for art-
looks MUCH cooler now that those drawers are hung on the wall. 

This is BEFORE we added  several more bookshelves and many more books.....

But I also want to live simple.

Maybe simple is less about stuff and more about my attitude about the stuff.  I love having guests and I appreciate being able to anticipate their needs so my home can be their haven.  I want to know when I’m ready to create; I’ll have the supplies to use.  I just can't seem to get rid of books but I'll sort again for next Friends of the Library book sale. Meanwhile, my guests are quite entertained by the library. So it's not exactly simple living but it's working out. 

United Airlines was more than willing to gate check my carry-on freeing me to stroll unencumbered through the airport.  Grabbing a verse completely out of context, Jesus said "My burden is light, my yoke is easy."  I don’t have to carry around the burden of my stuff and I certainly don’t have to hold it over my own head. I can look around at what God is doing and join Him- like being hospitable and creative. I can choose carefully what I need for each leg of the journey. I can trust others will share when I have need.  I can soak in the comfort and memories of the pieces I keep. 

Turns out the road to simplicity is a bit more complicated than I thought.  Kinda like life. 

“A child of five could understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.” 
― Groucho Marx