GinaFish.com

I’m learning as I get older new things all the time. I’m glad for that because I use to worry that once you became an adult, you knew it all, and it would be a struggle to keep your mind sharp.

Yesterday, I learned that I have a genetic default unlike most women. I do not hoard clothes or jewelry. Not on a grand scale anyway. I have one jewelry box. It’s not a tall cabinet kind, it’s not as small as a woman’s shoe box, yet, it’s full. It’s crowded with earrings, papers, sentimental things.

I have a closet that I share with my husband, five drawers, and a chest of five drawers in the garage that holds out of season clothes. I think I might have five old purses, plus the purse I carry now.

I mention this because I’m trying to figure out what my substitute is. Surely I have one? Something that I hoard? Pictures maybe? I have joked before about having a bad memory, yet I have drilled it into my husband enough, that in the event of a fire, the pictures have to be taken out of the house. Pictures help me retain my memory.

Of course, I’m not immune to getting a case of “Keeping Up with the Jones”. I dream of things like travel trailers, a new house, new vehicles, eating at restaurants four days a week, vacations to far away places.

But I also hold another extreme dream that I’m learning not everyone has. My materialistic self struggles against my keep it simple self, which leads me to be to crazily content with what I have.

My keep it simple self screams, throw away all the clothes except 6 outfits for winter and summer, for everyone in the house. Own one dress, and two pairs of shoes. Don’t wear make up, deodorant, or shave your legs! Quit wearing a bra! Throw them all away! Toss out the television and computer! Grow an organic garden and buy some goats and chickens! Invest in some solar panels and screw the electric company! But a pump and use the well water available for free right under your front yard! Buy a composting toilet! Take solar showers! Become a hippy and perpetual camper! Have hubby quit work and us live off the land! Homeschooling little house on the prairie for everyone! Long LIve Peace and Love!

That’s my keep it simple self. But then, living like that isn’t so simple when I already live like I do. It requires change. I learned a long time ago, that I don’t like change. I think I’ll go through my jewelry box now, and amaze myself at all the earrings I have kept for more than 10 years, and can’t throw away for sentimental reasons and be happy that I don’t find the bling on Jewelry Television enticing. Today anyway.

What have you learned about yourself recently?