November 10, 2011 at 7:33 am, by Carl

. . .is too much stuff?

 

I read a recent report that said Americans are paying for over 1 billion square feet of storage for our “stuff.”  This report said that there were over 30,000 self-storage facilities, each with 100s of units, across the country.

 

So, do you suppose all of these are owned by rich people?  I mean, isn’t that the myth—that most of us are poor and can’t have the nice things of the rich. . . so obviously then, only the rich would have excess stuff, right?

 

But wait, I own one of these storage units.  I use it to store my books from my speaking business, though my wife and I have also stored some important records “off site.”  So, I am not rich, thus maybe, others also have the same situation.  They only have a storage unit to hold some important papers or a few business related things like inventory.  Maybe?

 

Nah, I don’t think so either.

 

What we have here is more evidence to just how much stuff we have.  The country has completely fallen prey to the myth that “more is better.”  In doing so, we have really set ourselves up because, as both President Bush and Obama have stressed (and every other President in the past few decades), if we don’t buy more stuff then factories don’t make more stuff.  Our entire economy is really trapped into a consumer worldview and as we have now seen over the past 5 years, the economy stalls.

 

But more importantly, in accepting the storyline that “more stuff is better,” we have also drunk the koolaid about what the “American Dream” really is.  Rather than what that phrase has meant historically, that I have the liberty to own my own property and have freedom to live as I wish, we have traded the real dream for the unreachable fantasy of “more, more, more.”

 

Are you stuck in that cycle?  Do you have a storage unit full of stuff you bought, once believing that your life would be so much better with that new thing, but now collecting dust?

 

The Bible has long taught us a message of simplicity.  Jesus urged us to “store up your treasure in heaven” rather than trying to collect more junk down here.

 

As you continue to take steps in an attempt to Live Well, remember that the pursuit of more money to buy more stuff is a path to a dead end.  Not only will you not end up happy, you’ll find yourself paying a storage facility in order to keep your so-called important stuff—happily collecting dust rarely to be used again.

 

Break loose.  Release.  Declutter.  Give it all away.  You will immediately feel freer, and that lightness will enable you to run on your journey to real success.