Dear Jessica Brennan,
I’m not a pack-rat, and neither is Dad. He has headphones and guitars and that is about all he needs, yet somehow the house still fills up with stuff.
We have a rice cooker that has been used once. It lives next to the egg poacher that has been used twice. Here is a good rule of thumb. If you can make something in a saucepan of water faster than it takes to put together the convenience item for making it, use the sauce pan. We have a Wii, although I don’t know where it is. We had two hockey nets for ages, and we have several Christmas decorations that never see the light of day, even at Christmas.
For those of you who don’t believe that abundance shows up for you, look in the kitchen drawer you cleaned out six months ago, or the cupboard under the stairs. I guarantee you that it is abundant with things you thought you got rid of, or need to get rid of. The cup holder from the festival or the multi-use logo-ed screwdriver from the trade show will be grinning at you when you look inside.
About every six months we have a purge at our house and when we do I always marvel at how junk seemingly has grown out of the walls and up from the floors back into the space we cleared out not that long ago. Time is like that too. Try to set aside two hours with absolutely no distractions and you will see what I mean. Clear a day and watch it fill up. A friend will call, the washer will break or an unexpected invitation will arrive.
All stuff isn’t bad stuff and all free-time-fillers are not bad, but junk and wasted time are things to watch out for. Just as junk food will fill your tummy but not nurture your body, junk in your house can weigh on your brain and junk activities – too much mindless tv or internet for example – can make you bored and googly-eyed, which brings me to my final point. Leave an opening in your thoughts, and new ones will jump in, and all thoughts are not created equal.
One thing is for sure, filling or emptying any open space, whether it is in your home, in your day or in your mind, is a conscious choice, so you have to be just as vigilant about what you think, as you are about what comes into your surroundings and what gobbles up your time. A rice cooker takes up space on a shelf, and an endless Facebook surf takes up time in your day, but a recurring negative thought takes up space in your brain. If you think of your mind like you think of your house and time, you will see that there’s only so much space, so banish the anxiety and worry. Eliminate the over-thinking and obsessing. Let everything that isn’t useful go.
Get rid of your mind’s dusty rice cooker, egg poacher and hockey nets and make room for something that serves you better.
Love Mum xo
