I saw an article in the news recently about this cargo ship that ran aground off the coast of someplace or another ... and it got me thinking about how amazing it is that our household *stuff* has traveled back and forth via ocean cargo ship several times as we've changed assignments from the USA to Asia to Europe to USA to Asia. Amazing that in all our moves over the past 11 years only a couple of things have even gotten broken or lost out of our nearly 8,000 lbs. that are moved each time. While it's true we don't take all our furniture and household items with us every time we move overseas, we do take *a lot* of boxes of stuff.
When I reflected for a moment about this photo, I did wonder what sort of things were dumped into the ocean that day. Was it someone's precious things? Photos? Scrapbooks? Treasures from a far away land? Favorite stuffed animals? etc. I hope not. Maybe it was just a container full of canned soup or something. Regardless, it is now in the ocean. We have known friends that lost their entire container due to a storm that blew it off the ship! And, one friend sadly lost their vehicle which actually made it all the way to port, but was then dropped into the bay as the crane was unloading the containers from the ship. :-/
This article has me thinking about projects like scanning all the photos I have that were taken before we owned a digital camera and also to net down on worldly possessions. There will be a garage sale here at our housing complex in a few weeks. Sounds like a great opportunity to go through stuff and weed out that which we don't really use or need. Even better is to be efficient about decisions for new purchases ... like making sure we don't buy stuff for the kitchen or tools which can only be used for one purpose. Then you end up with too many gadgets and there's not enough space to store them nicely so you can find them for that one-time purpose!
I usually think about and enjoy organizing things around the house ... it's the other 4 members of the household who don't really make it a priority. Sometimes it seems as if the *stuff* is out of control. Anyway, enough said about the stuff.
2 comments:
I wish we lived closer in part so that we could "help" you weed stuff out. We still have puzzles, World magazines, dress up clothes (have to give those away!), bubbles etc. that you gave us before you moved back. We used all of those things except the dress up stuff (for small girls which we don't have) in the last week. They are a part of our everyday lives still! Thanks so much for them all!
I hate stuff, except for shoes. I can be like Charles who fits a lot of stuff in his car, except that I would fill it with shoes. Anything else, I could care less. Oh, I forgot, books, too. Well, I guess I'm not as material free person as I thought myself to be. But, it is liberating when we get rid of stuff. It gives you a new perspective on life. I'm so glad the children had a great time camping. I was impressed Charles took them all for a whole week. Wow, a quiet week without having to talk to anyone! I think I need one of those weeks. I miss you all.
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