Gonna be Amish

My husband and I have often talked of adding on to the house.  We reside in a small 3 bedroom one bathroom no basement house.  When talking about this potential "add on" we decided that if we ever were to knock out one wall, our house would explode with "stuff" all over the neighborhood.

 When we bought the house  10 years ago it seemed like a great idea.  We had two whole extra rooms to do anything with.  We were going to make one an office and one an exercise room.

We slowly started to accumulate "stuff." We not only had the usual "junk drawers" in our house we had two whole "junk rooms".   If it didn't have a place we would  put it in the" junk  room" and we would deal with it later.  We had everything from scrap pieces of paper  to an old glass shower door.  There was a ceiling fan, old computers, mattresses, a treadmill and an old mirror and anything in between. 

We started to have kids and realized the "junk rooms" had to go.  We had to part with things to make room for these precious gifts that we were going to bring home.  Eventually the rooms got cleaned out.  Then as we added kids, the house filled up again with such things as doll shoes, play combs and curlers, stuffed animals, at least 67 coloring books and 13,458 broken crayons, roller skates, water guns, puzzles, and just about any toy that Walmart had to offer. 

Then the decision to home school was made so we started to collect educational toys such as,  microscopes, flash cards, play clocks, 7,894 books, scissors, glue and all kinds of scrap paper, stickers , glitter (which should be outlawed), globes, maps, and blocks. 

What do you do when you have so much stuff?  Well I will tell you.  You go to the bank and get a loan to buy a shed.  Then you take all of your stuff and put it in the shed.  You let it sit in that shed, that should have cost you $2,000, but by the time you paid interest, it cost you close to $10,000.  Until one day you decide to sell it at a yard sale for nickles and dimes and then before you know it your $10,000 shed is empty and paid for and all  you have to show for it is a truck full of "stuff " you are going to take to the goodwill and thirty dollars in your pocket from what you sold.  

The bible warns us about storing treasures for ourselves here on earth. 


 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also."  Matthew 6:19-21

Why did we keep all of that "stuff" for nine years just so one day we could go in debt to store it and then practically give it away later?? 

With the new year approaching I have many new goals for myself. One of those is to become more "Amish"  Now I am not out bonnet shopping and I have no intentions of getting a really cool black hat for my husband and asking him to grow a beard to indicate that he is "taken".    By "Amish" I mean that I am getting rid of some clutter around here.    I am done storing up things.  I am too busy of a mom to be "finding the other doll shoe" or "locating the 56 train track "so that this can be a complete set.  I am done dusting, plastic plants. And I am through vacuuming around decorative furniture that no one can sit on.  I am even done keeping broken crayons so that one day I can prove something to someone as I melt them all into little heart shaped crayons for valentines day.  That's right I am proclaiming that I am too busy to be a "pinterest mom"

What purpose does all of this serve but to take my focus off of what really matters.  My objectives as a mother is to teach the kids peace in a world full of chaos.  Teach them to work together in a world full of enemies.  To be responsible, loving caring and giving adults in a world full of selfishness.  I want them all to have servants hearts in a world full of "every man for himself".  And above all I want them to love God and follow Him and His purpose for them.  I want them to know what a marriage is all about by watching me and my husband work together, not from a t.v show full of scripts.  I want to be an example of a godly woman so that when my son goes out to find his future wife he knows what morals and values to look for in a wife.  I want my husband to be an example of a godly man so that my daughters know what a real man is when they go to find their future husband.

There is no peace with clutter, but there is peace with God.  This year I am letting go of my "earthly treasures"  and searching for that peace.    I am becoming more Amish.  I am going to teach my kids that "stuff" doesn't matter.  We cannot take it with us.  I am going to tell them, through my actions, that it's not  the stuff we have that makes people remember us, but the kindness, and love that we left in the hearts of those who were put in our paths....