During this planning, packing, and getting ready to move I find myself going

through what many others go through, "Stuffitis". I had such a hard time

just giving things away I liked or knew I could get money for. But then I

remembered how good it felt when I received office furniture on my freecycle

list or the chairs I received that match my mini dining room table.

But I had to go one step further. I had to visualize my new home without so

much "stuff". I have to purge all of the dead weight in my life. It reminded

me of a story I was told by a missionary who returned from 3 years of

missions in a foreign country with her family of four.

She collected antiques. There were many and they were beautiful. She

specifically remembered a spinning wheel that was very old. But the Lord

told her to sell it all. I'm not sure if He told her He would give it back

to her ten fold or not. But somehow that's in the back of my mind. The whole

family was agreeable and sold off "everything" that they could not take with

them. This included giving up a large, beautiful house that was owned by her

father. The sister was given the house instead.

When they returned to the states they were given a very small two bedroom

house that needed to be almost completely rebuilt. (They had three daughters

by that time.) But after all was said and done, the missionary explained how

the house was turning out just as she wanted, people from church were giving

her antiques, and how one of the ladies at church even asked her if she

wanted an old spinning wheel.

Material things will come and go but if you're not living life then those

material things have no value anyway. So while this is a difficult journey

for our entire family, I know there's an end in sight shortly.

Side Note: I'm starting to think this move is harder on the children since

they both recently started working real jobs and mostly work nights. By the

time they get home, we're all too tired to get our schedules together and

synchronized. Then on their days off they are supposed to pack and clean.

Well it's not happening as we thought it would and therefore there's chaos

in the house. Unfortunately all of our reinforcements are overly busy too.

So my husband and I decided to work as fast and hard as we could for a few

hours each Saturday & Sunday and a little each night. Then while writing

this article and side note I realized; if we didn't have so much stuff, we

wouldn't be going through this chaos.

Think about that and do your best to dunk your junk into the trash, have a

garage sale, or put it on freecycle .

©2006 Susie Glennan

Susie Glennan has been happily married since 1982 and is a mom to

three, 16, 18, 20, mother in law to one, 24, and grandmother of two, 21 mos

& 4 yrs. She ran an in home daycare for 8 years, home schooled for 8 years,

taught many different classes for home schoolers, subbed for LA City Schools

and taught at Ventura College. She¹s been the proud President of Busy Woman,

Inc. located at www.thebusywoman.com and has been consulting on scheduling

and time management since 1986.

Related Tags: moving, organization, material property