Stewardship of "suff"

I have to say that I am fortunate. Over the years I have been blessed to have "stuff". When I moved out, my parents gave me "stuff." I married a man who already had a bunch of "stuff."

Shortly after we moved to our first home, we were expecting. With babies come lots of "stuff" that society tells you that you need to have. My parents were raised to never throw anything out and passed on that trait to me. So we kept what we had and collected more "stuff." Five and a half years ago, we moved to a house that was bigger than we needed.....which was perfect for all our "stuff" that we had been collecting. If someone had something they no longer wanted, we often took it. We ended up with eight desks in our house. We ended up with eleven bookshelves full of books. We have a lot of toys. We have five walk-in closets so we have lots of clothes. I have to admit I can't pass up a sale so I helped purchase things which made our home full.

But somehow over the years, I thought we had been responsible with all of our "stuff." As my youngest daughter grew, I thought that I had been doing a good job of passing along "stuff." We had received many hand-me-downs for them and I thought I had done the same. You can imagine my surprise as we have been packing that I have located clothes that were too small for my youngest when we moved into this house 5 1/2 years ago.

For the last few weeks, we have been sorting through all of our "stuff" to see what will make the move to our new home. We are moving to a house that is half the size of our current one. We are downsizing in a wonderful way. There is a young teenage mother who has received a number of baby items that we just don't need. She has received unopened packages of diaper wipes and clothes and a dresser. All of this we just gave her because we remembered that someone along the way helped us as we were starting out. We gave away our piano and furniture through freecycle, because we knew that we wouldn't have room for the "stuff" in our new home.

At first it was hard to give away things, but now I am happy watching it all leave my home. It has been a freeing feeling for me to not feel under pressure from all this "stuff" that has been all over our home. But it has been wonderful hearing the stories of people who have received our second-hand (and even third-hand) goods. It was nice to hear from the college student who was thrilled to have a coffee-table. It was wonderful to meet a budding musician who would take our banged up piano that needed lots of tlc. The piano had at one time been in a church basement until they gave it to us.

While there are many moments, that I have been dreading in this packing and moving process, I have to admit that giving away our "stuff" has been a wonderful experience. As I look around my home with boxes stacked to go to our new home, I realize that I still have a lot of "stuff" even if I have already passed a lot on to someone else.