“The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
Funny, isn’t it when you have a saying or a thought rumbling around in your mind but you just can’t seem to remember all the right words?
In the old days, it could take ages to locate the errant verse. First, you would go to the library, locate the right book in the card catalogue, find the book on the shelves and then read through pages and pages of stuff before you found whatever it was you were looking for.
Today, with only a bit of the thought in my brain, I keyed in the words I remembered and presto, there was the “rest of the story”. I was surprised to read that this line is from “A Child’s Garden of Verses” written by Robert Louis Stevenson!
But I digress.
What we really wanted to write about today was simplicity – “getting back to basics”. It was this verse that brought to mind the vast amount of “stuff” that is out there and made us think about how little we really need.
Most of us are always looking for more places to store our extra stuff. Every year, the pile seems to get higher and the storage spaces seem to shrink. Most of us are consumers who are motivated by low prices and the inevitable lure of getting a deal.
But, is it really a deal when you purchase something at a low price – if you don’t need it? How many_________ (fill in your own blank) does a person really need?
Maybe it’s time to sort through the stuff you have and figure out what you really need. It’s been said that we wear 20% of the clothes in our closets, 80% of the time.” So, if you don’t know where to start simplifying your home, why not start with your closet? Keep the clothes that make you feel fabulous and make sure they are in good repair and be ruthless with the rest.
The best time to clear out your closet is at the beginning of a new season. Then, when you donate clothes to your favourite charity, they are in season and can be enjoyed by someone right away.
To paraphrase the quote at the beginning of this note,
The world is so full of a number of things...
with less, we should all be as happy as kings!
