Sometimes I have to focus on something else other than me. I was depressed and made a list of what was getting me down and shared it with my wife. Top of my list was sorting through several hundred records, determining what to keep and then organizing and storing them in some fashion so I could find them. For months I was looking at several piles of them that were placed on top of the bookcase and other places and the clutter had me depressed. I did not know what to do with them. My wife and I discussed places where we could store them in an organized way if we just cleared these spots in the living room. I was thrilled: now I had a way to organize the LP’s I wanted to keep. Yesterday I spent several hours going through these albums. Later on I realized my depression had left. I had focused on something other than me. And another benefit of the list was my wife worked on one thing that was also depressing me. It was a room we had once called the junk room and was now mostly empty. There was no progress being made there. She starting chipping away at it. It looks like that one day we might have a guest room. Once it is completely empty we will paint and furnish it. I was thrilled at the progress she had made in a few days. These were two majors things that had been bothering me. All of a sudden I had hope. And most of my depression left.

I have thousands of LP’s, CD’s and cassettes but always return to this one.  My nerves are ragged and when this happens I “pull out” this 60’s album “Clouds” by Joni Mitchell.  I did put it on cassette years ago.

The music is soothing and I will play it over and over and also search for other quiet music until this phase of mine passes.  I can’t listen to uptempo music right now.  I don’t think my episode will last too long.  I am still sleeping whole nights so I am not overly concerned.  I will play it by ear.  The more I can soothe my nerves the quicker I will return to normal.

Why Hoarding Is Wrong

Author: siggy

Hoarding is wrong. Your “number” may come up tomorrow so what good did it do you. There is nothing wrong in properly using your resources and planning for the future. Up to a point.

There is always a balance. At what point is too much too much? I collect LP’s. I have too many of them. And the really good music, unfortunately, gets buried. And when you have too much you can’t give each individual new record the proper attention.

Collecting too much of anything at some level sometimes indicates we do not trust God to provide for our needs–like storing too much food in our pantries.

Sometimes all we can see, do is our very next step. Trusting our Lord is trusting He will provide for us. Yes, we try to conserve our resources but hoarding is not necessary: He will always provide us with food and shelter.

I don’t know how to extricate myself from my things.  I feel trapped by them.  I have too many LPs, books in particular.  That is only a short list.

Being married makes it a little harder.  Some of the things are hers or ours.  There are still many books and cassettes in boxes as well.  I just want order and don’t know how to get there.

My house is budging (??bulging??) at its seams.  I tell my wife someone is going to have the mammoth job of going through our stuff when we are gone but that does not make any difference to her.

We had made three trips to Austin to finish the job of going through her Mom’s stuff.  Too much of it is still in boxes in the basement.  It costs us a small fortune to ship that stuff.

I just don’t know how to downsize.  We have a junk room upstairs.  It could be a guest room if it was ever cleared.  All this is driving me crazy.

I just want to throw away, give away stuff.  I want more order in this house.  Pray for me.  I don’t know what else to do.