Slow Accumulation
a Saturday Story
[Saturday stories are a break from the daily Scripture-based devotion. These are merely stories from life. Sometimes there is a moral to the story, sometimes they are just stories. You be the judge. I hope you are enjoying your weekend.]
Garage saleing would be a hard way to make a living. Not as difficult as digging in a coal mine, but a tedious and trying way of life, nonetheless. We held one recently. Our past one happened when a Bush was in the Whitehouse. I had finished out my carpentry career. It was time to rid myself of a lot of tools I never intended to use again, hardware I kept because I told myself I would need it one day, and lumber I couldn’t bear to throw away.
Sorting, organizing, and pricing was a long and tedious process. Things were gathered from our storage shed, our attic, and the garage. Monica decided to get in on the act and went to cleaning out the closets and cabinets. We stacked it on tables in the garage. Our dining room and laundry room turned into a thrift shop staging area.
We kicked it off on a Friday morning by setting up tables in the driveway at 4 AM and moving everything from the garage and house we hoped to part with onto those tables. My brother, Bob, came over to help and he was a great help since Monica had to go to work that day and I would have been left to handle it alone if he had not come over.
Then, around sunup, the people came. Buying for pennies what cost us dollars. By Saturday afternoon I was willing to give most of it away. When we wrapped it up, that is what I did with the remainder. It went to Goodwill or Habitat Restore. A few things went into the trash.
I held a handful of bills and a bag of change and prayed I would never have to do that again. It was a lot of stuff and I wondered how we managed to accumulate it all. The answer, of course, is a long slow process. It took years of taking in and not getting rid of things to end up where we were.
What I came away realizing is that it is better to jettison junk as you acquire it than to accumulate it and try to deal with it all in one weekend. Kind of like sin. Don’t let it build up and build up. Confess regularly and keep the slate clean because the more it accumulates the harder it is to deal with it.
