I missed posting last night. Sometime before supper my Dad came by to let me know he's taking a load of trash to the landfill today and he'd take ours, too, if we had any. If ?

Not only did the process of moving uncover the fact we were living with massive quantities of garbage we called "stuff in storage," we no longer have a bi-weekly trash pick-up service. (Which is a whole 'nother story and a big rant about recycling and, yeah...)

This is the pile that needs to go away.

So I ventured into the open garage/workshop where everything has been getting dumped for the last three weeks and started sorting. By the time I maneuvered my way back OUT of the garage, covered in dust and webs and who-knows-what, I was exhausted and irritable.

We managed to move at least a small pickup load worth of stuff I thought was marked for the trash. Yes, that's right, our trash moved with us.

And that, my friends, is the problem with mental, emotional, and spiritual trash that piles up in our lives as well. It moves with you no matter where you go, into every situation and relationship. Eventually it overtakes space in your life where you should be LIVING, but because of the trash, you can't go there, can't expose it to anyone.

Practically speaking, you know what I'm talking about... it's the stuff under the bed, or in that front hall closet, or shoved in the crawl space, or hoisted into the attic, or piled up in the garage. It probably served a purpose in your life at some point, but those days are over. Instead of dealing with it, you store it up.

The same is true for the hidden rooms in our hearts and minds, where we store intangible boxes of old "labels" and records of negative conversations and albums of FAIL pictures from our pasts and general other junk. Ever look at someone else's emotional baggage and think, "Why are you keeping that?" Yeah, the same could be said of all of us. And that set of emotional/mental/spiritual luggage, even if we package it in expensive leather cases from Gucci or Hermes, hinders us from living the free, unfettered lives we're called to live. 

I've heard that one of the reasons Native Americans thought white men were weird was because they "saved" their boogers in handkerchiefs and stuff the hankies back in their pockets. To someone who'd never witnessed such behavior, it would indeed seem strange, saving something gross and useless in your pocket.

And yet... what boogies are you saving?
Let's get rid of 'em and move on. Take back your living space!