Stuff, Stuff and More STUFF!!

Ever pack for a vacation and can't decide what to take? How do you narrow down all your STUFF and decide what's important and what's not?



Imagine you're given one hour to collect everything that's important to you . . . and it has to fit in these two cases at the left. Could you do it? Could you narrow it down to the things that mean the most to you?



Or is it just stuff? Insignificant THINGS that don't amount to anything?



My husband's mother was just placed in an assisted living home and we spent last night going through her things, trying to decide what she would need. Everything she owns fit in a small closet in a room in our house. She used to have more. A whole house filled with STUFF, but over the years she's given it away or sold it. Now she has photos, old letters, addresses scribbled on scraps of paper and a tiny jewelry box with a dozen or so sets of earrings in it. Besides her clothes and some linens, that's it.



I'm 49, the same age she was when I was married . . . 26 years ago. Back then we had nothing, drove junkers and scraped and saved just to buy a mismatched set of washer and dryer (one was rust, the other green). We felt rich then. No more going to the laundry mat. We've spent all these years collecting STUFF we really don't need. Will we spend the next 26 giving it away and narrowing down what's really important until it fits into one or two suitcases? It sure makes one think about what's important in life and why we waist our time making money to have more STUFF. We can't take it with us.



What's important to you? What would you put in your suitcase?