Possessions: A Roller-Coaster Ride Through Our Life.

And we thought we needed it all!

Life gives us the right insight at the right time, I think. At the moment I am fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time with the slightly older crowd. The Grey Brigade so to speak and what a privilege it is. Aren't they the ones who sort of know what is important and what is not?

One of the ladies I chauffeur to the doctor's rooms, lives up a slight hill and it is rather fun trying to manoeuvre the chariot in such a way, that she needn't walk so many steps. Driving on her lawn is not my favourite, as I need to reverse between a peach tree, a washing line and her shed.

As I got out the car to fetch her, I happened to see a new-looking coffee maker standing among the dusty lot. I only noticed it, because it was the same one we had back in South Africa. Gosh, hers looked still new, but was obviously given the boot out of her kitchen. Strange, as this coffee machine also makes a mean cappuccino.

The more I thought about this yesterday, the more I realized yet again that stuff is just stuff. When we are younger, we want to have all this stuff. Somehow we imagine that our life wouldn't function without all this stuff. Heck, we willingly sign up to work way past our retirement age in order to have it....

Oh yes, think about it...every time you buy another contraption, possession or some such, you assign more time to your work life. One has to pay for it. If you didn't get all the possessions, your pension pot would be ready so much sooner and possibly nice and plump too!

Most of our possessions that we spend half our life acquiring ( at vast cost too ), gets put out to pasture in the other half of our lives. Downsizing happens when we suddenly get that bolt of insight. That realization that we don't need it all. Dust collectors are just that. More work on the domestic front and space wasters.

If we have these issues in our home, maybe it's time to downsize, ahead of time:

• too many things in our closet? It doesn't matter how big a closet is, it will always be too small to hold it all.
• our lounge is overfilled with our possessions. Keeping it clean is a major task.
• our spare room, the room on standby for visitors needs to be cleared before visitors can sleep in it. Haven't our spare rooms become our storage facilities?
• our garage and or attic are testament to all the crazes we participated in. A surfboard, a few bicycles, shiny toys, paddling pools, roller blades and oh, the list is endless...

The one plus point of people having too many possessions, is that Bob and I have benefited hugely form their eventual downsizing. Most of our furniture consists of " downsized stuff "...

Biggi