Stuff and Thankfulness

I have a new plan for our household after Halloween. It's called "No more new stuff."

Seriously. If I had a webcam, you could see that the desk is covered in piles of stuff with barely enough room for the keyboard. On the left side of the keyboard is a foot high stack of bills, papers, contact lens and glass prescriptions, a desk of cards, a picture frame for Jupiter's birthday friends to sign at her party, a computer mouse that goes with Jupiter's computer game thing, a toy guitar, drawings, a die that I think goes in the Yahtzee game, a pink marker, a blue colored pencil, a five of clubs that doesn't belong in the aforementioned deck of cards, a hello Kitty notebook, and a purple straw.

And that's just in the one spot.

I'm tired of stuff. Jupiter, however, is not tired of stuff. Jupiter is one day going to star in the tv show about hoarding. She wants to keep EVERYTHING. Which is bad enough. But she also fixates on one or two things at a time, carries them around everywhere, then puts on down to do something else, and then when she wants it again can't find the current object of her fixation because it is buried under everything else.

But she still wants more stuff. The only thing she doesn't want is something she already has. If she doesn't already have it, she wants it. If she does have it, it's important and must be kept forvever.


So I've decided that in November, we are going to practice being thankful for What We Already Have. In other words: Not Being Thankful Because We Get More Stuff.

I think the hardest part for me will be practicing Not Picking Up Any More Cheap or Free Books Becuase I Don't Have That Book Yet and There's a Whole Shelf of Free Books At the Y. (And no, I certainly did not grab two books off that shelf tonight).


In December, I am going to practice Sneaky Ways To Get Rid of Stuff We Already Have Before We Get More New Stuff.

This plan, of course, does not extend to groceries. We are allowed to buy food. I expect, however, that I should be able to plan for cat litter, cat food and health and beauty aids and we shouldn't need any new items from those catagories.


I have to go Pick Up More Stuff now because people are actually going to come into my house on Sunday. Maybe I can let just the kids in and make the adults wait outside. Maybe I can make the kids all take home an article of random stuff with them when they go.

Except the books.