Possessions and Echos

I am getting used to the echos that come from a house that has a lot of furniture gone.  We got rid of the dining room table about a month ago.  We had tried to sell it for years, and then we tried to give it away, and finally we donated it to a thrift store.  I was worried that it was so scarred that they might not take it, but they did.

While the first half of the Great Flooring Project was underway, we slept where the dining room table had been.  Now that the first half of the flooring is complete, we've moved the bed back to the back bedroom.  We're keeping the front bedroom empty for the furniture and the kitchen appliances that it will hold during the second half of the Great Flooring Project.

The other night, I packed up much of the china cabinet.  We have so much china--and now, no dining room table.  But we'll keep it for now, even though I prefer eating on our stoneware.  The stoneware can go in the dishwasher--of course, for many years of my adult life, we've not had a dishwasher, so I could have been using the "good china," since I'd be washing by hand anyway.  But I haven't.

I've been thinking about how we accumulate stuff and how we get rid of it.  Part of it comes with marriage.  I'd get rid of a chunk of our stuff, but my spouse wants to keep it.  He'd get rid of a different chunk, but I want to hang on a bit longer. 

Some of that stuff has been moved to the cottage.  I have a few boxes of childhood/teenage memorabilia that I'm not ready to get rid of yet.  I have several boxes of writing that I'm likely never going to need--and yet, it's hard for me to toss.  We'll keep the photo albums because digitizing them would take too long.  I've put them in plastic bins, all the better to weather the weather.

We're keeping a very long sofa.  My spouse loves it; I do not.  But that's O.K.  I tend to sit in my one favorite chair.  I still miss the favorite chairs of yesteryear.  We're hoping to find and buy some incliners in the shape of a wing chair.

For now, we will keep the books.  I've gotten rid of lots of them.  Will I really reread any of these books?  Perhaps.  I have a vision of a long retirement where I've outlived everyone and need my books and memorabilia for company. 

I think about what various religious traditions say about our accumulations.  I think about the emptiness and how much I'm liking it, even though I know that the emptiness comes because the cottage is stuffed with our stuff.  I'm thinking about how it is hard to find people who need our overflow stuff.  I'm thinking about the china we have, the stoneware set in the house, and a different stoneware set in the cottage--and now we have no table.

Zen Kristin wants to keep the emptiness.  Ancestor honoring Kristin wants to keep her grandmother's stuff.  Christian Kristin wants to share with the less fortunate.  Capitalist Kristin realizes she's been collecting the wrong things.

And so we limp on.