As a little girl growing up in North Carolina, I used to like to watch our many families of gray squirrels as they scurried about burying nuts for the winter. I used to wonder how they would ever find all of those nuts when they got hungry. The truth? They don’t find them all! They find nuts based on their senses, not based on their memory of where they buried the nuts. Quite possibly they often dig up other squirrels’ nuts and feast on someone else’s work. The point is this: they bury with a purpose in mind- food for the future. BUT have you ever noticed that while they are busy burying, they are also busy eating? Squirrels enjoy the fresh food from the season while putting away for a snowy day.

Just the same, we often are caught between finding the balance of living for today and preparing for the future. We don’t need to avoid the phrase “live for today” because it sounds fatalistic (after all, we are each rather fixed in our own “today”). Neither should we ignore the future while living it up today. This is a lesson that has hit home to me during recent weeks.

Call  my purging frenzy an obsession and you may be right. However, what’s been driving me is a desire to simplify our “extras” when it comes to clutter. My ultimate goal is a time-saving one. I want to spend less time in maintenance mode and more time on projects that have lasting effects and eternal value.

This process of purging has opened my eyes to a few things about myself. While I’ve never considered myself a hoarder (and I live with a husband who hates clutter as much as I do), I’ve discovered some small but sturdy hoarding tendencies in my life. While perusing that catch-all drawer, I found votive candles and tarts that I had kept since we got married (almost 8 years). I saved the Yankee candle called “wedding day” on purpose for purely sentimental reasons- that’s ok, right?! But I saved a big bag of other scents under the thought process of “what if they stop making that scent?”  The result? A big bag of scented candles, unhappily merging their unique qualities and never seeing the light of day.

Another area of hoarding that I discovered was notecards and stationery. Perhaps I come by this honestly- after all, I am a printer’s daughter. I love paper and printed items. I found stationery from when I was a little girl. I used to save one of every set of notecards or stationery just to remember the set by…you guessed it- “in case I never see this set again.” The result? Hundreds of notecards and several boxes of stationery.

Dayspring would be so proud.

Music is another area of stockpiling…I have a lot of old music that is out of print and hard to find. While in college, part of my housekeeping duties was to clean the auditorium. One of the music teachers told me I could have one copy of any song I found on the piano, and that I needed to throw the rest away. Well, I certainly took advantage of that and usually took music every day and filed it away. I tend to save every music book that comes into my grasp. In purging, I finally realized that no one is ever going to use mine or my husband’s old piano books. They are so scribbled up and battered from being toted to scores of piano lessons throughout our childhoods. They’ve been reluctantly moved from house to house in the last 7 years with no purpose in mind. The result? Stacks of old music and theory books that will never be used again.

So…what I’m seeing here is that I DO tend to hoard…certain items. We won’t talk about clothes or books today, okay? I’m working on that…{ahem}

I’ve spent some time analyzing why I’ve held onto these ‘groups’ of items. I’ve realized by hoarding those items, I have been hindered from enjoying the full use of them. In fact, I have actually enjoyed them a lot less because I have hoarded.

What is the solution here?

Live for today. See the reality of seasons in life. Embrace the beauty of each season. God gives today’s blessings today. He wants them to be enjoyed today. Or perhaps He wants them to be shared or even stored…to bless someone else’s ‘today’ down the road.

I stopped burning candles so often because I had babies….then toddlers, who I don’t trust in a room with a burning candle. This is a season for me in which constant candle burning is not practical. It’s more sensible for me to occasionally pick up a Yankee candle jar or a small candle at Bath & Body Works (their scents are amazing!) than it is to have a big set-up for tart burning. It’s time to pass those votives and tarts on until a later season…and when it comes to the candles I have that are safe to use, now is the time to burn them.

Stationery and notecards: I know what I need to do with them- write on them! (duh) I love to write notes and I have written many through the years, BUT I think I have saved more than I have written. Cards are tools of blessing…UNLESS they sit in a box for years, unused. It’s time to get writing and encourage some folks. And I think I know a little band of girls at church who would love to receive a bag of notecards and stationery to use with their pen pals. I’m going to pass them along, which will also be a blessing to someone.

The music? Much of it is now off the shelves and bagged to be sent to Salvation Army thrift shop. I still have quite a bit of music (and I’ll never stop collecting), but now my library is practical for my existing season of teaching, playing, and studying.

These areas of hoarding, I realized, were also a disguised form of procrastination. Maybe it wasn’t putting things off, but putting things away for a better time, for a different day. But time has taught me that that day never comes.

How about you? Do you have hidden hoarding tendencies or have you had them in the past?

When you purge, are you surprised at the sheer amount of stuff you have collected? Share your thoughts and solutions in the comment section below- I’d love to hear your suggestions!