Anytown, anywhere, rural, urban, along the fringes of the suburbs you will find storage facilities. Acres and acres of big and little rooms, temperature controlled, pods, stacks of shipping containers, you name it we have a place to put your stuff. In fact we all have so much stuff we need to keep building more facilities to hold all of our stuff, and we have to move our stuff from our homes to these facilities so we can make space to buy more stuff. This is in large part what keeps the economy moving: manufacturing, shipping, storing, wanting – the never ending cycle of stuff.

Some years ago my husband and I converted what had been a dirt room (not a mud room, an actual room full of dirt) that was off of a storage room into another storage room. The storage room became an office and the dirt room became storage, and also where the furnace and water heater live. When we built it we put shelving in and said to ourselves, proudly, perhaps with too much hubris, we will never allow ourselves to fill this so it is not easily accessible and usable.

How do you make God laugh?

Make a plan.

Years later, two adult children out of the house, plans for what we might need in the future, we have boxes and bins and furniture and family mementos that no one will use or want but that we cling to. You can barely move through the room or access what you might actually need without a multi-step jenga experience of box rearranging. It was enough. It was too much. It was ridiculous. So I started to ask around, and chat with friends and as so often happens when you let go opportunities find you.

Most of this will find new homes, new uses, new identities as it is turned into something different. Some things will probably just be surrendered as garbage. That’s okay. I don’t like doing that but I accept it as a learning opportunity – how to be thoughtful about what I say yes to in the future. What do I want in this moment, what do I need, what will I actually use and be usable.

Today I was listening to a scripture lesson where Jesus sends the disciples out with the instruction not to take anything with them, not to ask for anything in return for their work. Receive the food you’re offered, know that the clothes on your back are enough, you can only wear one coat at a time anyway. It strikes me that we have people living in doorways and in tents on our streets and we have boxes upon boxes of stuff we probably can’t even remember owning living in temperature controlled storage units across the country. I am not suggesting that we move people into storage units. I am suggesting that somehow we know how to make space for what we value, and I wonder if sometimes we are valuing the wrong things.

I’m not getting rid of everything in the storage room. I’m not going to stop shopping. I like clothes, it is good to periodically replace the linens in the house, the kitchen mats need changing after a few years of feet and food and dogs. I’m not advocating for an acetic life of deprivation. I am hoping we can all do a little more wondering though when we go to click the ‘buy now’ button, when we put that box in that room, or package up the whatever for the whenever in the future that may or may not arrive. There may be someone else who needs that thing right now, we may have enough of the whatever to last a long time, we may never have needed the whatever in the first place.

So here is a little exercise I am going to try for the next few months: every time I want a new thing I am going to pause for three minutes and ask myself ‘why?’ What need is this thing filling, is there something else that will work? I am not judging a decision based on creating beauty or convenience, both are worthy, I just want to understand and be clear. Every box I look at in that storage room I am going to ask the question: what future am I imagining that this lives in? What present could this be creating for someone right now?