My significant other loves to declutter our home. And I’ll admit that I’ve had to be dragged along a bit before becoming fully onboard on the “less is more” mentality.
But definitely less so now. Because of this new way of thinking, I’ve given up a lot of things that I wouldn’t have expected to including:
- All of action figures
- My dining set
- Old books & video games I’ve had for years
- Old mementos I forgot I even had
- Clothes I don’t wear anymore because I’ve lost weight
Most of the above items I decided to donate and when I make donations, I always give to the Salvation Army. It’s because of something that happened about 100 years ago.
You see, my great grandparents and my very young grandma were living their lives when a fire started. They were trapped upstairs and had to escape through a small window.
My great grandparents literally threw my toddler grandma out the window to people below to catch her and then them in order to survive. Unfortunately, they lost everything in the fire which is something I can’t even imagine going through.
Thankfully, the Salvation Army stepped in and gave them what they needed for them to get back onto their feet. When my mother told me that story a few years back, it really made me think that I wouldn’t exist if they didn’t make it out of that fire.
I could have had a much harder life if the Salvation Army didn’t help out my family, especially as it was at the time of the Great Depression. I think of the systemic poverty I could have been a victim of and I can’t imagine having to overcome that to become successful like I am today.
That’s why I proudly donate to the Salvation Army whenever we do decluttering, even though the last time I had to drive to 2 donation centers because the first wouldn’t accept furniture. Over the years, we’ve given away so much that we don’t use or don’t bring us joy.
And some of it is, as the business card says, bric-a-brac. Bric-a-brac apparently means “miscellaneous objects and ornaments of little value” and that’s surely the case of anything that is only taking up space in our home.
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