One More Reason to Live Within Your Means

If you follow my blog, you have read the other day that my husband and I had quite a lot of snow to shovel recently. He has been wonderful and has continued to keep the driveway clear as the storm refuses to move away. This job has been made easier by the fact that our cars are in the garage. This isn't the case for many of our neighbors. Their cars are in the driveways since their garages are filled with other things. I'm guessing they have an excess of stuff that doesn't fit in their homes so they store it in the garage. That means their cars go in the driveways, which makes shoveling the driveway difficult. If they would pare down and simplify, they could park their cars in the garage making shoveling easier.

Perhaps this is a silly reason to think about living within your means. People are so interested in acquiring things and our society supports this quest. But where does this stuff all go? Instead of surrounding ourselves with a few meaningful pieces that bring us joy, we purchase more. The reasons are varied: the neighbors just got one, I have to have it, HGTV used one in one of the shows. There isn't much thought beyond that like where will I put it, will I get rid of something else, and do I really need/love it. But, once this stuff enters our home, we are reluctant to get rid of it. There is an attachment to it because we have spent time and energy on it. Therefore, it piles up, in the basement, in the garage, and in storage areas we pay for every month.

But we have all experienced the frustration of doing a job because there is too much stuff in our way. We can't just do what we need to do without first cleaning up the clutter or clearing out the area that needs to be cleaned. A simple job turns into a day-long project and we end up feeling defeated before we even begin. If we were to live more simply though, having only what we really need or love around us, tasks would be done with ease, freeing our time for things we really enjoy. It would mean clearing out the clutter, admitting that we made some bad choices when we purchased things. There would be some hard choices involved and some soul searching. How nice, though, to park a car in a garage and have a nice clear driveway to shovel at your leisure.