Clutter Clutter everywhere but no space for me to think

Graduation has come and gone and now I am back in Georgia sitting here with nothing better to do. I started cleaning out the closet of my old room and it feels like I am conducting an archeological dig in my closet.

The top is representative of when I just returned from my mission until now. What a walk down memory lane. I put all of that stuff in a pile for Goodwill. The next layer represents high school graduation right up until entering the MTC. I put all of that stuff in the same pile for Goodwill. The final layer represents four years of high school and it received the same treatment as all of the other anthropological finds and will hopefully find their way into homes of those who could really use them.

All this is reminiscent of an article written by a former professor that I had at BYU-Idaho. The article is about adultery and abundance, and today it was made clear to me that I have what I need and then some. There is literally so much stuff in our house that there is not enough closet space to store all of the excess. A child stands the chance of being smothered to death if the Goodwill pile were to topple on top of them.

A prime example of how we expand our collection of material possessions can be illustrated with a personal example. When we moved into our new house in Georgia we literally doubled the amount of square footage from our old house. Our things barely took up half the space. Twelve years later it seems like we are bursting at the seems and don’t even have the room enough to store away what we got this year for Christmas.

Jared is another example of this phenomenon that occurs when people upgrade the size of their living arrangements. I remember when he first came to Hawaii he was sharing a room in Hale six and for all of those that lived there, you know how commodious those rooms are. It is not unlike living in a filing cabinet. Now that he is an RA and has his own room, his current room is full and there is little room for the bass guitar that he is selling for me.

I think that each year we should go through the closets and the drawers and ask ourselves,” When was the last time I thought about his?” There are enough clothes in my house that no one has worn in years to clothe several needy families and with all of the clothes that we have received for Christmas this year, I think that we can afford to do this.

As part of our new years resolutions, let’s make one about getting rid of the stuff that has not seen the light of day in a very long time. In the words of Moe Sizlack’s Bartending Professor,”De-clutter your hole, and you will de-clutter your soul.