As the seasons begin to change, my family is stepping into another sort of new season.

The simple truth? We have too much “stuff”. Instead of helping us do what we love (or what we’re called to do) better, our possessions are holding us back. So. Not. Good.

There’s been a fair amount of organizing and sorting going at our house lately, inspired by the above realization. Why have we been holding onto all these unnecessary items? There could be a dozen reasons, but someone in my family recently made an interesting observation: We may have been keeping things because we liked the idea that they had a story behind them.

Ah, yes, a story behind them. Ok, some items definitely could (even should) be kept because of the story behind them. I’m all for that! But other things…Well, it’s time to tell them “thank you” and let them go to a new home. It’s not that we don’t value the objects’ stories anymore; we’ve simply come to value other stories more.

Maybe  we’ve realized that while our “treasures” have tales to tell, we have our own stories to share. Stories about Guatemala. Stories of how we’ve seen God work. Stories of our family. The story God is writing around us. The kinds of stories the above painting helps us tell. 

Those are the stories we’d like to be sharing more. And if this “stuff” is holding us back, we’ve (finally) admitted it’s high time to say “adiós”. Even if that includes the books on the bookshelves…(gasp).

Another confession: It’s actually freeing to live a little lighter! (Not to mention cleaning is easier!) Who knew? We’ll see how it goes from here. If you have any tips of 1) how to whittle down your stuff or 2) how to keep from accumulating excess again, I’m all ears!