:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

I used to be a cluttered pack rat that clung to possessions I had no business keeping around. Moving to Connecticut changed that quite dramatically through the twin forces of necessity and shame.

When we planned our move to Connecticut, my wife wisely sat me down for the talk. We had to make a budget. I sat down to it kicking and screaming. I hated to think of limitations on our spending. As we came to grips with our limited income due to my career change from a mindless nonprofit drone into a hard up writer, we realized that we needed to downsize—big time.

I never would have put our extra book shelves up for sale. I never would have given away six liquor boxes worth of books to our local library. I liked our table. The couch was sorta comfy. The sleeper sofa was my idea in the first place. They all had to go.

Our storage shelves, our lawn mower, and all of the work we’d invested in completely renovating our home—all of it had to go. We had to move into an apartment that was half the size of our home. Some things we sold, but quite a few things were given away.

It was tough to part with so many things all at once. They were all part of the life we’d been planning at our home in Vermont. 

Moving day wasn’t easy. We drove our truck in and our landlord acted like a disgruntled child, throwing his hands up in the air dramatically when he saw how much stuff we had. Despite all of our sorting and thinning, we still had too much stuff. We filled our closets to the gills. My in-laws took a car load of items home with them.

We lived in a state of chaos for a few weeks. The rabbits weren’t happy. We eventually organized our lives to a certain degree, but it still felt cramped in our apartment. A year later we moved into a nicer apartment with a storage unit. That took the pressure off until a cross-country move loomed.

As if we couldn’t thin out any more, we set to work once again, dishing off yet another chair, our new kitchen table, and a bunch of my seminary books. We knew how to thin out by this point. It’s a miracle anything from our time in Vermont remained.

I’ve thinned out our possessions and moved about five times now, and I don’t miss one thing that I gave away or sold. Even the furniture that means something to me is replaceable. I’ve grown far less attached to my clothing, books, and furniture after passing through so many “thinning sprees.”

When you see how you feel about these objects in retrospect, you realize how important it is to love your family, friends, and even what you do for a living.

In retrospect, I can see that it was insane (for me personally at least) to think owning a nice house was more important than working at a job that I loved, doing work that felt significant and fulfilling. The house was the cart before the horse. I thank God every day that my wife was accepted at the University of Connecticut, that we sold our home in Vermont, and that I had to piece together some kind of writing career from our dark little Connecticut apartment surrounded by storage containers and books.

Having purchased so many things that I deemed important and then giving them away on such short notice changed me. I saw myself shift from really wanting certain items to living without them again and surviving just fine. It’s like shock therapy for the consumer lifestyle.

Perhaps some would say that I’m poor in possessions and property, but I would reply that I’m rich in time and meaningful work. Those two assets are priceless.