Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Seeking To Simplify

“Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. 20 Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. 21 Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21

  This verse is just such a great reminder of where our focus needs to be. Not on THINGS here on earth but rather on serving Jesus Christ and loving people. Things are certainly a useful tool but they shouldn't be our treasures and they should help rather than hinder us in our spiritual journey.

  So as we go through things in our homes and try to cut down on the clutter that may be overwhelming us let's think about our stuff with eternity in view.

I wanted to share with you a comment that Cheryl (who blogs at Homespun Devotions) made on my last Seeking to Simplify post. I found it encouraging and helpful and I think you may as well.
"We are a few years in to our minimizing journey. God has brought us a long, long way. We are now down to a storage unit and are going through box by box, item by item, literally, and we are analyzing every, single thing, seeking God's will as to whether or not He wants us to keep it. It is a calling and coincides with our quest to know Christ and to live life eternity-focused and not fixated on the things of this world. It is one of the most liberating things we have ever done, and we feel so much lighter. God is so faithful!"

I also found this idea from Amy (who blogs at Life and Love) pretty neat as well:
 "I have set the first Saturday in February as a "Junk Exchange" Day with family and friends. It will be the 5th time I have hosted one and it always really motivates me to clean-out things as I know one of them might really enjoy or be able to use some of my things."


I have hosted a clothing exchange before but not one that included everything. Whatever you can find that works well for getting unneeded excess out of your house and if possible finding a way to bless others with it is pretty neat. When it works to help us get things that we DO NEED as well that is a blessing.

  I was able to work on my decluttering goals a lot last week as well and I am feeling a little pumped by success. It really does feel good to get areas organized and feel like things have been gone through and handled in such a way that it won't immediately get cluttered once again. This can so easily happen in areas like Megan's room. If we just clean the room and get all the stuff stored away neatly with out reducing the amount of stuff we often just end up with a huge mess again in a very short time. This time we have eliminated a lot of stuff and we have done some problem solving to try to get rid of problem areas like dirty clothes all over, etc. We now have a very easily accessible dirty clothes bag hanging up in her room, a better way to store shoes and we are working on other things.

  I would love to hear your tips and stories on getting rid of stuff in your life!!

9 comments:

Mrs. Chrissy T said...

I'm excited to read about your journey. I love the scripture you shared. It is freeing on deed to rid ourselves of junk.

Abbi said...

Thanks, Chrissy!

GranthamLynn said...

Wonderful post. Great vision. I would love for you to share this at
The Fabulous January Party. It's over here:
http://myjourneyback-thejourneyback.blogspot.com/2017/01/bucket-list-with-gigi.html
There is great wisdom here. Please share!

Cheryl said...

Thank you ever so much for the mention here, Abbi. I cannot begin to tell you how freeing all of this is. To look back and see where God has brought us from is nothing short of amazing. We had a 4 bedroom, 3 bath house with a huge, oversized 2 car garage, and an attic with SO much stuff. The journey has been intense, and, even now, with our reduced stuff, we STILL seem to have SO much excess. We have a huge pile of boxes by our front door filled with stuff that we just eliminated from our storage boxes. All of it will leave our home tomorrow, Lord willing. So glad you are beginning this journey!

Abbi said...

Grantham Lynn, Thanks for the invite to your linky party. I did go and link up. Thanks so much for coming by.

Cheryl, It is exciting to hear about your progress! Thanks for sharing. I was able to do a lot of going through in my office today and set up my new desk (we made it out of boards that came from a tree on our property and that we milled on my dad's sawmill). I am loving my clutter free work area!

Greg and Donna said...

I can relate to cleaning out and simplifying. We've had boxes stored in our basement since we moved 1.5 years ago. We are slowly 5-6 a day bringing them up and going through them, item by item. I have found junk to toss, boxes to send home with my grown children, and a box of books I have been searching for since we moved ~ my books! Its easier to get rid of collections, when they have been packed up. Except for my books....they stay! Donna

Abbi said...

Donna, Thanks for stopping by. I can totally relate to finding a lost box of books and being totally excited! :-) I do try to go through and weed out books occasionally but mostly we like to have a lot of books too. We are currently dreaming about building more shelves. We have now gone through the majority of boxes since we moved but every day I still notice on box (packed in the summer of 2014) that is sitting in our closet that has some of Ken's clothes in it (that is the label)and he has yet to open it. I am really thinking that they probably aren't clothes that he needs. :-) Hopefully that box can be one of the ones that we go through this year! :-)

Amy and Mark said...

Here is a link to the last time I posted about our Junk Exchanges: http://amye14.blogspot.com/2014/01/junk-exchange.html

Abbi said...

Thanks for sharing that link!!!

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