I ask myself, is this a New Year’s resolution that will bite the dust after a couple of weeks but I really do need to clear out and get rid of my stuff.

In the illustration above I have laid out all my CDs. You don’t even want to see the number of DVDs I have. The point is that most of them have been laying around for ages and I have not played them. I asked myself what is the point of keeping them. The point is, I like stuff. I like to know that I have something should I want it.

The trouble is that there are so many things on my mind which have to be done today that I forget about what I’ve already got. Is this a personality fault? I’m fascinated to watch programs about people whose living rooms are full of stuff but they have not got rid of that so we could call them hoarders. I guess there is a little bit of me in those people.

It seems that hoarders have had a history or an event of trauma, losing someone, divorcing, and their behavior has changed after this but in my case I can’t think of any such excuse

To entertain us all, here are some quotes about hoarding.

# Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected…. Hoarding is idolatry.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

# Hoarding knowledge ultimately erodes your power. If you know something important, the way to get power is by sharing it.
David Weinberger

# God has given us two hands – one to receive with and the other to give with.
Joseph Badaracco

# We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing. If we fail to fulfill this divine duty and privilege we have missed the meaning of Christianity.It’s not what you know, and it’s not even who you know. It’s how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence.
Billy Graham

# The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you will become stale. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish. Somehow the more you give away the more comes back to you.
Paul Arden

My conclusion from reading the above is that I would be glad to give away things but most definitely not to the recycle tip. Most of all I want to feel that something has a good home.

I have four pairs of good walking shoes that I had not used for years and there is nothing wrong with them. I have about six suitcases which I never use. I have about a hundred file folders which are doing nothing. I have goodness knows how many miles of electric and electronic cables used to connect my various equipment over the years.

Through writing this I have identified the problem. I would love to get rid of things but don’t know how to do it in a meaningful way. Perhaps I should have a garage sale. I’m not going to go to big car boot sales such as near Cheddar because everyone is doing the same thing and very little if anything gets sold unless it is at a ridiculously low price or free. I just want A GOOD HOME for them.

Perhaps I should just go to the green outside and just leave all the stuff there and hope that people will come and pick it up. I have done this once with excess vegetables and they went very quickly.

As for my CDs and DVDs apart from classical music ones including organ music I don’t really need them that much. Maybe I’ll just take them to the nearest charity shop.