Having Enough (In a Have-It-All World)

Thanks to my friend, Naomi, who sent me this powerful video that’s truly the essence of Having Enough. Please take a minute to watch; it’s short and well worth it.

If you are reading this, chances are you have not only enough but so much more than enough. If you want to help out the majority of the world’s citizens who don’t have enough (as in, live on less than two dollars a day), check out the End Poverty 2015 Campaign, part of the UN Millennium Goals.

It’s so hard to know where to start. Just wherever we are, I guess.

Thanks to Sharon for sending me this Salon.com article, which harkens back to the classic “Having Enough” discussion of how we define success and “enough” in an overachiever, uber-consumer culture.

The article is a Q&A with author Pamela Paul, as Salon describes:

“As the market for infant products grows ever more absurd, author Pamela Paul takes on $800 strollers, Gymboree and the bamboozle that is Baby Einstein.”

You get the idea. Challenging the “need” for all this crazy stuff (more, more, more) for our kids. Challenging the marketing machines and their “research” on what kids need. Challenging the values. Challenging the producers and consumers, and the choices we make.

Right on.

This month’s (March) “Having Enough” affirmation:

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary
so that the necessary may speak.”
– Hans Hofmann

Stop. Listen. If I cannot hear clearly, I know to unclutter. My home, menu, schedule, closet, mind. What I need to know about my life’s direction, health and relations is there, buried beneath the excess. The process of simplifying brings me great clarity.

Repeat: I eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary may speak.

(By the way, Hans Hofmann was a German abstract expressionist painter and art professor who wrote the book, Search for the Real. I love how his quote refers so aptly to art and life.)

Also, I realize I put last month’s (February) affirmation on my sidebar, but never actually blogged it, so I will repeat it here so it can be cataloged with the others:

“The first health is wealth.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My health is worth more than any possessions or accolades. If I care for my health, I care for my whole self and my loved ones. If I cherish my health, it continues to give me all I need. If I lose my health, I can set my intentions and actions to recover it. A healthy body, mind and soul are true gifts.

Repeat: I cherish and care for the ultimate wealth of my health.

My mom forwarded me this article, “The Struggle to Contain Ourselves,” from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.  It talks about the $6 billion — yes six billion dollar — storage and organization industry in our country.

Yes, Americans have so much stuff that we spend $6 billion a year on storage for it. And, still, this article says, 75% of Americans have so much clutter in their garages that they don’t have room for a car.  (This stat came out a UCLA study on our country’s “storage crisis.”)

It’s funny, one of my proudest feats over Thanksgiving break was creating a labeled cubby system that organizes my daughter’s toys, our mail, cameras and cell phones.  I love it, it’s so tidy and pleasing to look at. But we did spend a few bucks for this lovely organizing system (and it’s a cheap one compared to many).  We literally had to bend our budget to simplify our stuff.

Even though we try to live simply, I was going crazy from the stuff piling up in our living room.  Toys, mail, wires, receipts.  Argh!
When our daughter gets new toys, we give away or put away old ones.  We try not to buy stuff we don’t need.  We reuse bags (I admit, my one holiday gift this year is my fancy new envirosax, a set of five lush, colorful bags that roll up and fit into a little pouch in my purse, which I love — again, I spent money to save resources, I know!).

DH and I try to fight the obsession with more stuff, asking family members to pitch in together for one gift for our DD, instead of six; asking the mail carrier to stop delivering all the ads that we never look at (that, it seems, is an impossible request); cleaning out our bathroom cabinets and sticking to the same few natural products.

And, yet, I read this WSJ article, and I know I’m a part of this crisis. I know I chose to spend money on organizational products to simplify my life. To buy more to have less. It’s quite a paradox.

I think we’re doing better in our house, and I appreciate the progress. Change does not happen overnight, and we’re not extremists. But, still, we have too much stuff, buy too much stuff. We all have too much stuff.

This is nothing new, but it’s something to keep thinking about and keep working on. And if the fact that we spend $6 billion every year in this country trying to organize our stuff doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will!