Honesty and Growing Up

Decluttering has been such a challenge to me for years, I'm so amazed at all the insight I've been getting the past several months.

One recently, honesty. I've learned I have to be honest with myself. Am I REALLY going to use this? Do the kids really like this? Has it been that beneficial to me and my family sitting here in this box or cluttering our home? Could someone else put it to better use than we have, and really love and enjoy it? It used to be so much harder to get rid of things, rationalizing that there would come a time that the whatever would be important to us, maybe a NEED even, and knotting up inside over it all. It's wonderful feeling so much more free and have so much more faith in the future.

Speaking of the future, I am GROWING UP. This is actually very shocking to me. Yes I've got 5 children, but as a neighbor told me the other day, I'm just a kid at heart. No wonder I'm so stinkin' fun! But I'm passing on things that tie me to my past, recent or not-so-recent, and the future feels so much closer and more promising. As the scriptures tell us, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things" (1 Corinthians 13:11). To me "childish things" could be things that hold me back from my potential, or things I've already gotten my fill of. I've got plenty of things that were really meaningful to me at some point, we'll say CDs for example, but I've soaked everything I can out of them and they are just here hanging out. If I'm honest with myself I know they'll never be that important to me again, and I need to pass them on so they can be meaningful to someone else.

So there are two great decluttering mantras for today: Be honest with yourself, and put away childish things.