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?
One day, they just may be needed when the gardeners go on strike for higher pay, perhaps. Or maybe it’s because we (men, especially) just can’t bear to part with the accumulation of stuff we gather throughout our lives. Maybe we’re even willing to sacrifice a bit of cleanliness or non-cluttered space in order to keep around items that were never going to use, at least in this lifetime.
A great example of this is the fact that we might once have owned a really nice motorcycle but got rid of it long ago to fund the building of a brand-new nursery up on the second floor where the twins now happily spend their evenings. However, we neglected somehow to toss the full face helmet that came with the bike. It’s now occupying a place over the mantle, gathering dust and slowly rotting.
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.
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