Stuff

I have way too much stuff.

The way I know is that I recently moved and it has been pointed out to me in over and over in painful ways. Such as carrying stuff around, losing stuff and deciding where to put stuff.

I remember when I didn’t have much stuff. That was when I used to sneak into my brother’s room and take his comic books. I would tell him I found them in the bathroom. (You see if we found something in the bathroom, that was like no-man’s land and we could claim it as our own.) But, really I took them and read them. And when I was finished, I would put them back in his room. (That probably explains his ongoing neurosis.)

Back in those carefree days of no stuff I would spend hours in the dime store (where nothing cost a dime) looking at stuff, drooling over stuff and deciding which stuff to buy if I ever got any money. One big dilemma was when I had a dollar bill and I wanted to buy a wallet. If I bought the wallet I wouldn’t have anything to put in it, and if I didn’t I wouldn’t have any place to put my dollar bill.

Well my dilemma is the same only different. Now days I can’t decided whether to buy the big house and not have enough money to live in it, or have money but no place to live.

Yeah, this stuff thing has gotten way out of hand. We Americans are way too preoccupied with stuff. How many of us know what stuff we have hidden away in boxes in the closet, attic, basement or garages of our homes? Have you ever walked through an old house? They didn’t have closets because they didn’t have much stuff to put in them. My wife and I are living in a house that has four less closets than our old house. So where do we put all that stuff?

The sad thing is that we pass this on to our children. Our house is cluttered and full of stuff. There is so much stuff laying around it looks like my teenage daughter’s room. (Which is the way my room used to look, which is the way my parent’s house looks.–Generational Stuff Syndrome)

I remember when I left home I could fit everything in one car. An American Motors Gremlin no less. Then came the day I could fit everything in my car, except I didn’t have room for me the driver. Nowadays, I need professional help. To move that is.

It’s like the guy in the Bible. He had so much stuff all he could think of to do was to build bigger barns to put it all in. Then he died. Too much stuff just isn’t healthy.

You want some of my stuff?