Give and Receive

This summer some of my friends and I are reading the Book 7: An experimental mutiny against excess by Jen Hatmaker. She writes about a 7 month fast she and her close friends undertake in order to identify areas of excess and waste in their lives and in the lives of most middle to upper class Americans. Each month has a different focus from food to clothes to media, etc. I am loving this book!

During month three, she and her small group of close friends gave away countless items they had, from baby clothes to purses to furniture to bedding- to women and children in safe houses, the local homeless community, children in need at the local schools, teens needing prom dresses, refugee families newly arrived from war torn countries, and single moms in small apartments, struggling to make ends meet.

This book is so fitting for me to be reading as we are currently living on about 5 percent of our stuff, with most of our possessions in storage. We are living in a one bedroom apartment, and doing just fine with the basic stuff we need. My husband commented that most of the things we all possess really are luxuries.

What I love about this book is that the women give things away to specific people in need. They don't just chuck it down the street in a donation bin where you don't know who gets it, but they give with a purpose to persons.

A week before the movers came to our house to load up all our 1600 square feet, we had accumulated a large pile of odds and ends set to chuck in such a bin. That evening a gentleman called in response to one of my ads on Craig's List about an entertainment cabinet I was selling. I was a little- okay really resentful because he only wanted to pay a certain amount for a piece that I had personally refinished with paint and new hardware. He told me he was a student-I thought to myself, what does a student need my beautiful cabinet for?

When they arrived at the house, we discovered that he wasn't some yuppy kid who's parents had lots of money to send him to school in Boston, rather, his wife and their baby girl had just moved from India so he could study pediatric medicine. He asked if I had anything else I was willing to sell, as they had moved in to an apartment two weeks ago and didn't have much.

I immediately led him to our porch where we had accumulated a decent pile of items, and an hour later we had happily sent them off with a car packed full of all sorts of household items they would need to help them get started here. It was addictive, I kept looking for stuff to give away. It was....fun.

So my challenge to you who need to declutter-again- if you are struggling to get motivated or feel overwhelmed, think about who might need the very things you aren't using. Make a big ol' pile on your back porch. Or spare room or whatever.

If you want to be more organized and less random, think of who may have needs in your area. Contact your children's school and see if the counselors know of anyone in need. Have a girls night at your place where everyone brings perfectly good items they aren't using to donate, and then have fun organizing them and packing them up. Get your kids involved, so they can experience doing good for others, and not just getting more stuff. Kids are so receptive to that- they need to be taught that they aren't the center of the universe.

So, the next time you open a closet and want to close the door, start thinking about who you can help. It's a win-win for everyone.