It’s All Too Much

We live in an 800 square foot home. We’ve been here for 15 years. We have stuff. I mean, we had stuff before kids came along, but you should see us now.

Despite having so much stuff, we still find ourselves making regular trips to Costco, which leads to us bringing home even more.

Sometimes we feel like we should simplify. We have too many remotes, and I was thinking of getting one of those Harmony remotes that does it all. It just seemed strange that the solution to having too many remotes is to buy another one.

The same with all those organizational gizmos. Can the answer to having too much stuff really be to buy more stuff to organize it better?

I feel sick when I think how much we’ve spent on it all.

I did finally go and buy something to help deal with having too much. It’s called It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff by Peter Walsh, host of Clean Sweep.

According to the book, we’re not alone. Walsh describes what’s behind our accumulation of more than we could possibly use, although he never comes out and calls it Affluenza. The problem is never the stuff itself. It’s a way of thinking that got us there.

The solution isn’t to focus on the stuff. It’s to focus on a vision of what you want your house to feel like when you’re done.

I guess the best thing you could say about a book like this is that it’s started to have an effect on us. I’ve found myself thinking of our junk differently, and yes, we’ve started to dejunk.

Hope the people who buy my stuff on eBay don’t already have too much stuff.

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