The garage door was open when Shirley, our mailperson, came by today.  She wanted to know if we were having a garage sale.  “No”, I said, feeling a little embarrassed, that’s stuff I’ve been meaning to put away.  My car has been sitting out on our driveway for the last 3 weeks – make that four.  In its place is a table stacked with “stuff.”  Surrounding it, on the floor, is more of the same.  Shirley said her garage is so full she’s not sure she can fit anything else in it.  That led us to the question: why do we keep buying more stuff when we already have so much?  To which, of course, we didn’t have an answer.


So how did all that stuff get stacked there?   A month ago my husband and I had a get-together that one of our friends coined a Digital Barn Raising.  You can learn more about that on his blog.  In preparation, I cleared out the living/dining room to make space for people to sit with their computers.  And honestly, the living room needed clearing anyway.  I like to occasionally change out the display and, because I didn’t really have a place to store what wasn’t in use, the clutter had grown.  


Then I decided this would be a perfect time to get my husband to help me cut some additional shelves for our storage cabinets.  That took us a couple of weeks to get around to and in the process, I cleared out one of those shelves so I could more easily show my husband what I had in mind thus adding to the stuff from the house. 


But in addition to all that, with all that extra space, we’ve gotten lazy about putting away things we actually do have a place for: a couple of coolers we got out for the barn raising, cleaning supplies, cloth shopping bags, some things we bought at CostCo a couple of weeks ago, etc.  We’re filling the void. 


I intend to give some of that clutter away – some vases and candlesticks we don’t use, some things we picked up at garage sales that I’ve gotten tired of, but that in itself becomes problematic because my husband tends to get sentimental about things and wants to hang onto them.  Not wanting to have that conversation (sometimes argument) again, I’ve been putting it off.  Over the years, inside the house, we’ve learned to deal with our collection “difference” pretty effectively. We divide up our available storage space into his and hers to which we each then take responsibility in our own way.  For me that means a pretty steady culling of goods, for him that means storing it away.  So, I guess I know what I need to do now -- divide up the available cabinet storage space.  I’ll decide what I want to get rid of and pass the rest over to him.  He can then decide what he wants to keep and store it in his space.   The remainder we’ll give away.  Maybe by next weekend I’ll be able to get my car into the garage.