I'd call it: The Quest

Jar o' Playmobile

It's a typical Saturday at home.  Cleaning, laundry, dinner and family game time (Quarkle tonight).  Saturdays always feature the on-going saga of my current Quest: to be rid of everything we don't use.  I've been on this quest for two years now, and I'll tell you.  It ain't easy.  We humans form weird and loving attachments to our things.

In my non-quest years I Acquired A Lot of Things I Do Not Need and No Longer Use.  If I ever did.  Today I launched into the toys we bought for our daughter when she was younger.  I'd forgotten just how much there is.  I mean, what child needs a roving herd of My Little Ponies or a metropolis of playmobile?  We don't have one bouncy ball.  We have twelve.

I know a lot of these things came along during birthday parties or from Christmas wish lists.  Grandmas and doting aunts played their part.  It's not like I set out to populate the basement with plastic made-in-China.  But I did.

Here's a secret about shedding material things:  it feels grand.  I sell much of it in consignment stores--which will be the fate of the jar o' playmobile pictured above.  The things I can't sell I give to relatives and friends.  What they don't want I give to Goodwill.  And after it's all said and done I am free--from moving around boxes full of stuff I don't use and most importantly, from ever having to think of all that stuff again.

The spiritual refreshment of lightening one's load is a key element of my current release Painted Boots.  Aspen shops vintage for her clothes; yard sales for her boots.  Her ability to see the potential in something worn goes far beyond things ... it plays out in how she views herself and the people in her life.