Sunday, August 10, 2014

Peace and Holding Loosely To Our Things

We only have five more days of quarantine.
Michael took Friday off, because it's been a rough few months at work, and he hasn't been home as much lately.  So we took some time to reevaluate our ideals and whether or not we were meeting them. (We weren't.)

The last couple weeks and months, I've been experiencing a lot of sadness and stress about how much stuff we have in our house.  When we wrote our family mission statement a few years ago, we stated that our home would be a place of peace.  When there is visual clutter around, it does not contribute to my peace.  And when my peace is nonexistent, it negatively affects the family's peace and wellbeing.

I'm sounding like a minimalist here, which I genuinely am not.  But since I spend about 21 to 24 waking hours a day in our house, I want it to be serene and reflective of our ideals.

We've been trying to sell our "red beast" on Craigslist** for a few weeks now.  It was not providing me any peace.  It was beautiful, fun, and quirky.  And it was free.  But it was causing me a lot of thought about would I paint it?  Would we cut it?  Where would its final resting place be?  We don't even have a mud-room (or a need for one), so it was more for it's quirk than its functionality. It was taking a lot of thought, and we're firm believers that our possessions should not be our possessors.

We had someone come and look at it on Friday, so we decided to move it out of the house.  It was so rejuvenating to have it out in the garage.  I have some people willing to buy it for a lesser price than we listed it for. (Hey, we're still making money on something I picked up for free on a curb.)
Naturally, our weekend of relaxing and ideals turned into a few projects, like rearranging the entire upstairs of the house.   



I still have a basement to conquer, and I shudder to think of everything that's housed down there.  It was a genuine delight to have Michael home for a bit, to help me make some decisions about what could go and what could stay, especially considering an international move in the next year or two.

** Million now asks at least once a day if we are going to sell a household item on Craigslist.  I feel for the boy.  

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