D15c0v3r3d L05T

I like stuff. The stuff I surround myself with doesn’t have to be techie or new, it doesn’t even have to be cool. Things that are going to be in my possesion are just things I like, things I use, or things I’d like to use. Sometimes my stuff is an old motor and transmission for my car. A whole bunch of my stuff is old computer parts and software, recently I went through a cabinet and found my Wizardry disk for the Apple IIe. I look in my utility room and there’s a bunch of lanyards from conventions and flash drives over time. I open my nightstand and there’s a Sony AM/FM/Cassette Walkman. I can’t forget the boxes. Keeping the boxes all this stuff comes in is very important, you just never know when you are going to be finished with something and want to be able to package it back up and give it to someone just like you got it (there’s nothing more fun than opening a used product that has been properly put back in its original packaging). Good grief even the 320GB disk drive in my MacBook Pro is just about full (only 3.44GB free at the time of this writing) with home video, photos, music and 2 virtual machines full of the same sort of stuff.

If the stuff was just my stuff then there wouldn’t be a problem since I’m pretty good when it comes to being “at peace” with my own messes, but taking a look around I see stacks of paper stashed in all sorts of cubbies. These are memorabilia from my daughter’s ever continuing saga of growing up. She makes cards, and pictures, and crafts, and writes stories, and writes poems and lots of other stuff that can’t be thrown away. Then add in the books, and clothes, and science projects, and Home Depot kids projects, and the bike, and the pool toys and you’ve got part 2 of too much stuff.

To top it all off there’s my wife’s stuff, and she has a ton of it too! The little homemaker around our house is into pictures, and cute little statues, and furniture, and decorating for all seasons. Add everything together and you’ve got a stack of storage bins the size of Sears Tower. What doesn’t fit in storage bins will usually end up flowing into the aisles I carve into the garage so I can get to my own stuff (remember the engines, and tools, and stuff?).

No one in my house will throw anything away if it has any life at all left in it. We look at this as being our way of being good stewards. I think God probably agrees since a recent clean water flood through our house from the refrigerator freezing up didn’t destroy any of our accumulated stuff other than a little wrapping paper and a book or two, though there was considerable damage to our house in the form of hardwood, carpet, and drywall. So, back on topic, we keep lots of stuff around. Even the dogs have more toys than they have business keeping around (Including a fine collection of chewed golf balls courtesy of the Tiger Woods wannabe’s that live behind us).

Continue our little tour into the stuff we fill our lives up with. There’s work and school, personal development projects, church work, side projects, overtime at work because we’ll never get done without overtime, panning for gold and weaving through corn mazes, vacation road trips, playing solitaire (or Quake or Second Life or PopTropica), fixing the cars, wrecking the cars, shopping (not me though!), cooking, laundry, yard work, “putting the house together”, and not to forget… eating out.

Pretty soon it’s obvious the home and life of the Wheadon family is overfilled, like one of those Glad bags that just keeps growing and growing and growing. The thing is, we Wheadons aren’t alone in this dilemma and there are some who believe we are conditioned this way by our society that requires individuals to consume more than they should. I personally am not going to dare point any fingers and call right or wrong. I’m just trying to think a little harder before cranking through Woot, 1 Sale a Day, or Amazon’s Deal of the Day.

As an aside, take a look at The Story of Stuff I don’t necessarily jump on her bandwagon, but there are a few nuggets in there.