Ten Thousand Things

How many things do you (and your family) own? I'm betting we own ten thousand things. Or more. It depends on how you count, though. I put out this (very small) fake tree decorated with tiny flamingos, ladybugs, ducks, pigs and statues of liberty. I put these decorations on a drinks cabinet so the bottles show some scale. There are also some tiny Lego Christmas trees, extra little teeny ornaments, and three full-size ornaments. Back to how many things do we own...I bet there are fifty in this picture, depending on how you count. And, when you do this inventory in your own life, do you count the half-empty bottles of liquor (and, for that matter, that almost empty bottle of ketchup everyone has in their frig)? Why is this a question? Because this sea of things that we own, use, dust and take responsibility for has an enormous influence on how we use our time, energy and money.And on how we feel about ourselves.

This topic always occurs to me at Christmas when a lot of people (not me) are out buying things for other people that they may or may not care about. As we head into this year's Holidailies, I will try to present thoughts on many things, but I will probably keep a little running commentary on the issue of stuff as well.

By the way, about twelve years ago, I made an ongoing list of stuff that I owned and the estimated count at the end of that experiment was 4905. I have ditched a number of things on that list. The great move downtown over eight years ago was responsible for a lot of that. I notice that the list included 'shiny new Sharper Image Scales.' We still have those in the condo. They still look pretty shiny and I bet I've replaced the battery two or three times.

Anyway, welcome to Holidailies and we'll just see where this goes. Meanwhile, think about making your own list.