Purposeful or Lovely

Have nothing in your house that you do not know how to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. – William Morris.

Easier said than done.

The guest room is my catch-all. It displays the sprawl of my Goodwill pile, my “needs to be put away” pile, my “needs to be done” pile, and my “needs to be shipped” pile. There are alot of piles in there.

It makes my life alot easier when the piles get consolidated into a “does this really need to be ours?” pile.

In my defense, I did not bring it all home. I do try to not bring something home unless I have an intentional plan for it. What ends up in the pile is a pretty high percentage of items that were gifted to us. And yet, it still becomes my responsibility to either find it a home, or let it be here.

Sometimes I try to mentally trick myself into just leaving it be and letting it sit in the guest room, but indecision is a decision too (not to mention unproductive to simply let the pile keep accumulating). My procrastination skills really come out strong when I have let it get too far, for too long.

And next comes the cleanse.

We are involved in a local non-profit that has a massive annual yard sale, and a fairly high percentage of items gifted to us end up finding their purpose in serving a new home and in making the non-profit a little money at the same time.

Thing is, it does feel good to have less.

Our consumer/self-focused culture would never advertise that, but it’s true.

When we have less, but what we do have is intentionally chosen and enjoyed, that is the sweet spot I aim to be living in.

I hope to be able to look around and see not just a high quantity of stuff, but quality meaningful items that either have a frequent purpose, or add beauty.

From an additional perspective (because if you have spent more than half an hour with me, you know a certain part of my soul comes alive when we talk money strategies) – a rough 78% of American’s are living paycheck to paycheck!

When I hear that I can’t help but think of looking around and seeing all that STUFF and realizing that it used to be money.

Being intentional with our time and money not only frees us (and our time and money) to invest it in what truly is a priority, but also honors God in my opinion.

We could be spending money left and right on things that don’t matter, accumulating stuff left and right that again doesn’t really matter, or being intentional with both.

It’s not something that society is going to embrace you for, or that your friends may easily understand- but the narrow road rarely is.

We are both blessed and grateful to not be included in that 78%. It truly is a combination of both blessing and intentional work to stay out of that majority category. And it is so worth it.

I will continue to draw on this quote when evaluating if something needs to take up residence in our little home and asking myself- Do I know where this is going to go? Will it frequently be used for a meaningful purpose? If not, is it stunningly beautiful?