Too many rolls of sellotape!!

Catherine:
Moving house, makes you realise how much stuff you actually have. Over the last 3 months we have been sorting through the stuff from our old house. We have moved to a place without an attic, and we don't want to end up using the spare rooms for storing boxes and stuff we don't use, but rather for people to come, and stay for a period of time. It's hard to get rid of things, I work on the philosophy that if something might be useful and is still working shouldn't throw it away. But too much stuff means more tidying, more shifting stuff to get to the thing you actually need, and in our case, buying stuff, particularly sellotape, because we can't find what we know we have somewhere and need to wrap a present or something.

Sellotape

My house in a tip, the stuff just mutates,

and jumps on the floor, a mess it creates,

and then I spend time just picking up mess,

I'm starting to think that that I need much less

And when something is lost the problem I find

is I can't seem to see what its hiding behind

so I tip more stuff out to search in vain

and then have to pick up the things once again

So what are we doing as a family on the reducing stuff front? Taken loads of stuff to charity shops, some to the tip that couldn't be used, given some away, and had a friend help question whether we really need all the stuff we have and allowed him to ask us challenging questions about specifics :)

Which is making a big difference on the house front, but we're trying to apply the same principles to our lives...

David:
Yeah, you're right... we can't find the sellotape that holds our life together, so we go out and buy a new one. The clutter and noise that we invite into our life means we can't see clearly so we keep praying for a new roll of guidance. We're too busy to really apply last week's sermon, so we rush out to God Channel for a new pack. We've never found the real problem because of all the stuff piled on top, so we keep tripping up over the same sin and asking for a new roll of forgiveness. We're too busy to put roots into a relationship so it keeps coming unstuck so we go out and look for another one...

Love your solutions to the practical problem - made me think about the life-equivalents...

The Charity Shop
Charity is just an old-fashioned word for the kind of love God has. So maybe there are others who could make much better use of some of the stuff we have; resources, gifts, time. Instead of us hoarding it for our own use, creating clutter in our lives, how about we find others for whom it wouldn't be clutter, but life-changingly important? What about that gift of mentoring that's lain on the shelf for year? That money for the rainy day that despite many rainy days, is still just sitting in a bank account? What do you have that you aren't using - who can you give it to?

The Tip
Some of the stuff in our life that we treat as precious is actually worse than just clutter. It's sin or the remnants of it. Memories, hurt, long-ago consequences. They've become part of who we now are and therefore hard to part with, even though deep down we know they simply hold us back or chain us. It may not be the result of our choices, our sin, it maybe the consequence of other people's choices. Nonetheless, it's there, cluttering, hindering, paralysing. It needs ruthlessly taking to the tip - the cross. Amazing who you meet there. Often there'll be someone you know. 'Ooh, didn't think they'd ever need the tip'. There'll be people like you, there'll be rich people, poor people, folk from every background. All with one intent - maybe with a little embarassment 'don't want others to know I had that in the house'. But all with the same smile as they leave. 'Finally got rid of that!' Strangely, it's a place of joy and peace - a place of new and unlikely friendships. We should go there more...

Accountability
It takes trust and friendship, but we've all accumulated clutter in our lives that has become the norm. We no longer see it for what it is. That's the time to invite friends in to help us. They won't know everything, it's not them making the decisions, they're there to encourage and ask the difficult questions. They don't make judgments about what you then choose to keep - they're friends and friends don't judge. But they do encourage - pour in courage to help you decide: give to others, take to the tip, keep for a while, treasure forever.

Catherine:
I've seen your loft and I know you well enough to know you guys need help too!

So on the house front and I guess in our lives there's a bit of a way to go, but way better than it was :)

Sellotape. Roll on less stuff :)