Retirement

We've spent the last few months trying to get the house ready to list, and we  finally did so on Monday. We learned several lessons in doing so – one of those is that, having cleaned up everything, it's surprising to look back and see how messy we were. It's not that we couldn't have kept everything neater, but it always seemed as if we had to run off and do something else, and didn't have the time to keep things as neat as they should've been. We find out now that it was all the running around we did, doing things that really didn't have to be done, that caused us to be so messy.

Along similar lines, we have been going through the 'stuff' we've collected over the years, and we will continue to do so (because there's still a lot to do), and we're finding out that we have way more much 'stuff' then we really need. Some of it comes naturally – you save clothes because the next child in line may need them. You save other stuff because when the children set up their own homes they may use some of the stuff you've collected. And, the reason we don't like to think about, we're just naturally pack rats and we like having stuff. Going through all the stuff that we haven't used, or even seen, in years is helping us realize how much we were accumulating things on automatic pilot.

Even more interesting, getting rid of stuff is actually very freeing. I surmise that it may be something like what those who are joining a convent or monastery must encounter – getting rid of all the material stuff that weighs you down can actually free you for a lot of other things.