Heartland Women, please join us in our summer bible study of:

Becoming the Woman God Wants Me to Be: A 90-Day Guide to Living the Proverbs 31 Life
by Donna Partow

This 13 week study will be conducted weekly via blog and begins Monday, June 16th.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Day 31: Give Away a Everything You Can

Today's lesson really hits me on a personal level.  God has had my family on quite the journey this last year and today's reading hit on part of it.

Three months ago, we sold our home and moved 6 of us into a 2 bedroom apartment during our home transition.  As you can imagine we could only bring our bare essentials to fit all of us in this space and still have room to live.  For 3 months we have lived without 80% of our possessions.  We brought only essential clothes items, 1 couch, no dressers, 1 pot, 1 pan, enough dishes and silverware for everyone to have one at each meal (I haven't used a dishwasher in 3 months), I sleep on the couch, my husband sleeps on the floor next to me on a twin mattress... you get the picture.  On Sunday our belongings came out of storage and into our house.  I have to admit it was positively overwhelming to see all of the boxes.  I am normally a minimalist and I am pretty good about giving away items we don't use or won't use anymore and I admit clutter in my house stresses me out.  We quickly realized we have way much.  There are things that seemed important to us before this move, other things I know we can live happily without and other stuff I forgot we owned. Our donation pile is heaping and I have only gone through boxes in two rooms. I still have many more boxes to go through and I am already feeling more free.  I really encourage you to minimize your clutter by giving away everything you can to bless others and live blessed in return.  

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I started decluttering awhile ago - which isn't usually hard for me because I tend to go the other way and throw things out that I actually need (like important paperwork...yikes!). But it seemed even more imperative after I returned from a mission trip one year. Seeing how little people needed to be happy, then coming home and seeing insane amounts of "stuff" in my house made me feel almost claustrophobic. This was a great reminder that God can meet all our needs, and we require so little to live for Him.