Want to bring a little space to any home? Well, get rid of the junk and improve the home by bearing down and making a decision that the accumulated ’stuff’ that has built up over a lifetime can actually be allowed to shuffle off this mortal coil. For instance, take a look at the wet dry vacuum that once worked but which now sits alone, in a corner and neglected by one and all.
Maybe we tend to think like the people who build the space shuttle over at NASA and intend on keeping redundancy in vacuums like they keep redundancy in keeping extra flight computers aboard the shuttle. In truth, we’ve convince ourselves that there may one day be a need for two sets of vacuums because the floors in the basement will be so flooded a pair of vacuums will be needed, maybe.
Maintaining that particular line of reasoning, take a moment to go into the garage and get a look at all of the stuff that’s been accumulating in our lives for many years. Over in the corner sits a pair of garden blowers that were once top-notch but which are now, just like the vacuum, neglected and ill used. Chances are good that we haven’t use them for years but they aren’t going anywhere, right?
Still, they might just one day come in handy should we need an emergency garden or the gardeners we’ve hired go out on strike, right? Most likely, it’s because people — and especially men — just can’t bear the thought of parting with stuff. We’re actually even willing to tolerate a buildup of ’stuff’ that we most likely are never going to use again in this lifetime or the next.
Consider the fact that we no longer own a motorcycle after getting married and settling down with the wife and the two recently-arrived children. That bike is long gone and the money we got for it was used to buy the nursery that both children are still happily occupying. However, the full face helmet that went along with the motorcycle we kept, sitting up on our mantle and now gathering dust.
Of course, if one were being logical, the helmet would have been gone long ago but maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that we aren’t totally the domesticated beasts we really are. In fact, there’s a good chance that a replacement bike is just over the horizon, maybe 20 or so years from now when the girls are safely through college. There it will be, in the driveway, waiting to be ridden.
Hey, it could happen though the chances are still exceedingly slim. We love junk, which in our eyes is not junk but something valuable and that has a connection to our past. Improving the home by getting rid of the junk is at once exceedingly easy and extremely difficult, though. Keeping stuff like helmets, vacuums and blowers MIGHT be a connection to our past but it DEFINITELY is connecting us to junk.