We own a lot of...stuff

We came home to Oklahoma last week for a visit. Oklahoma is no longer home, but I have a feeling that no matter where else I live and for however long, I will always call Oklahoma "home."

We came back for my brother-in-law's wedding. The boys were ring bearers and they did an fantastic job! The Monkey kept asking "Where's the princess(the bride)?" and after he got all dressed up in his tux came into the bathroom to tell me, "Mom, I look awesome!"

He's the new King of One-liners.

Their wedding was one of the prettiest weddings that I have ever been to. They thought of everything--even having Taco Bell delivered around 11:30 to sober up all of the guests before driving home. (How creative is that?) But the best part of the wedding was watching how much fun the bride and groom were having and knowing how much they were in love.

So now starts the second phase of our trip--emptying out a 10 by 20 storage unit that we've had for the last two years. When we moved across the country, we didn't have enough room for all of our furniture in our little townhouse. We had a huge garage sale and got rid of a ton of stuff, but there was still plenty left over that needed to be stored.

Two years later, we now have our own house again that's big enough for most of our stuff. Today we spent about five hours emptying out the whole thing, putting about 2/3 of it on a moving truck that the Golfer gets to drive for 1,300 miles. The other 1/3 is going to be sold tomorrow in a sale. I've had several people say that they are interested in buying some of our furniture. They have to because there isn't any more room on the truck!

The thing about this that bothers me the most isn't having to pack it all up and spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on gas to get it home. What bothers me is how much stuff we own. We aren't that old and we own a lot of crap! The Golfer has boxes and boxes of memorabilia from his days as a junior and a college golfer--the kind of stuff that you move from garage to garage until eventually your own children have to deal with it.

There's also baby clothes that I can't bear to part with and boxes of teaching supplies that can't be replaced. We've weeded through most of the junk, getting rid of anything that didn't have some kind of special meaning attached to it. And still we have a truck load full.

I used to shop a lot. When we bought our first house, I bought all kinds of cute little things to decorate with. Then we started to have children, and there were all sorts of other cute little things to buy. Before long, we had bought our second home which of course had more room for more stuff.

But now I have a new way of looking at all of that stuff. I have a responsibility to each and every little thing that I own. Most of these things will have a life way beyond my own. Plus, I don't want to burden my children one day with having to find a place to put it all--like in the city dump.

I don't shop anymore like I used to. I like to think that I'm slowly turning into a minimalist, but our Budget Rent-a-Truck says otherwise.