Think of the life energy expended in the ownership of a single possession: planning for it, reading reviews about it, looking for the best deal on it, earning (or borrowing) the money to buy it, going to the store to purchase it, transporting it home, finding a place to put it, learning how to use it, cleaning it (or cleaning around it), maintaining it, buying extra parts for it, insuring it, protecting it, trying not to break it, fixing it when you do, and sometimes making payments on it even after you’ve disposed of it. Now multiply this by the number of items in your home.
The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life
Francine Jay
Category: AVARICE & ALMSGIVING & MINIMALISM
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When we open a closet full of things, instead of feeing thankful that we have what we need, we feel stressed because we see a need to organize. How tragic! Owning fewer material items actually makes it easier to be thankful for what we have. When we have less stuff, we somehow appreciate the stuff we do have more.
Invite Delight
Evelyn Rennich -
Pull any item off a retail shelf, carry it to the corrals of cash registers, and you can exchange the money you’ve earned to bring the thing home with you.
But the true cost of a thing goes well beyond the price on the pricetag.
The cost of…
Storing the thing.
Maintaining the thing.
Cleaning the thing.
Watering the thing.
Feeding the thing.
Charging the thing.
Accessorizing the thing.
Refueling the thing.
Changing the oil of thing.
Replacing the batteries of the thing.
Fixing the thing.
Repainting the thing.
Taking care of the thing.
Thinking about the thing.
Worrying about the thing.
Protecting the thing.
Replacing the thing.When you add it all up, the actual cost of owning a thing is nearly immeasurable. So we better choose carefully what things we bring into our lives, because we can’t afford every-thing.
The Actual Cost of Owning a Thing
The Minimalists -
“The best things in life aren’t things.”
—Joshua Becker -
“It is sad to see that, in our highly competitive and greedy world, we have lost touch with the joy of giving. We often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don’t know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness, and inner peace come from the giving ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others.”
—Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World -
“Material things can never wholly satisfy us. Indeed, we know from experience that every item we have desired has pleased us only for a short while. Then it became boring, and we started to desire something else.”
—St. Innocent of Alaska -
It is impossible to overcome these passions unless we can rise above attachment to food and possessions, to self-esteem and even to our very body, because it is through the body that the demons often attempt to attack us. It is essential, then, to imitate people who are in danger at sea and throw things overboard because of the violence of the winds and the threatening waves.
—Evagrios the Solitary,Texts on Discrimination in Respect of Passions and Thoughts -
“Live on one income—even if you earn two.”
—Joshua Becker -
“If a man has no worries about himself at all for the sake of love toward God and the working of good deeds, knowing that God is taking care of him, this is a true and wise hope.”
—St. Seraphim of Sarov
SO GOOD QUOTES 