I envy the turtle. It goes through life unencumbered with its home on its back, never needing to change shells; unlike the hermit crab constantly in search of a new dwelling as it grows to maturity, discarding the shells it has outgrown.
The reality of my life is I have been a squirrel. Nuts here, nuts there; nuts, nuts everywhere. The squirrel equivalent of stuff. This week I was made painfully aware that being a squirrel has not been healthy for my bank balance.
I have stuff in storage. There, I said it. Stuff in storage. For more years than I will admit in polite society. Is it the squirrel equivalent of a hollow tree full of nuts? For a real squirrel, nuts are money in the bank; a hedge against famine. My hoard is just stuff of no real value to anyone. Put into storage at a time when it was expedient to do so. Since then, I've been paying monthly; believing that as long as I kept writing the check, I didn't have to do anything. Out of sight, out of mind. Pay and forget about it. My attitude definitely channelled Scarlett O'Hara... "I won't think about that now, I'll think about it tomorrow at Tara." But the problem was always there, nagging at me that one day I'd have to do something about it.
The full knowledge that the albatross of stuff was tightening around my neck was triggered by a change in storage unit management. A management that cannot keep its records straight and is now raising its rates next month... to several times what I had been paying. That was my wakeup call. Deal with it. NOW!
I will be spending more money to make a trip to dispose of the stuff I should have donated to a thrift store or put in a dumpster instead of a storage unit. Lesson learned. But at last, I will be free of the albatross of stuff. (And the monthly storage payment.) All of my possessions will finally be contained in one place. The 485 square feet I call home. My little pyramid.
Henry David Thoreau said it best: "Simplify, simplify, simplify."
Penny Pincher
