Hello and happy Sunday funday. [Blogged while sneezing dust out of my body.]

I’ve been cleaning, organizing, donating and tossing all sorts of things over the last few weeks. Clothes, decorations, trinkets (am I 80), purses and a million other things. Like I’m currently looking at an old Bath & Body Works bag filled with holiday greeting cards I’ve gotten in the mail from various charities. Because I had wanted to fill them out and send to deployed soldiers. Is my halo blinding you? Well anyway, that hasn’t happened yet. So it’s now just a paper bag filled with more paper. But #GoodIntentions, so it stays.

It’s a very clear indicator you have too much shit when you physically have nowhere to put it. I’ve stacked as much as I can stack. I’ve filled bins. I’ve put things inside other things. So now the spare bedroom I’m sitting in right now looks like a storage room with a bed in it. I’m actually laying in a pile of eight pillows.

Here’s where I transition into another documentary that’s helped shape my perspective. But honestly, this film, Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things, is so beautiful. You just must. It spoke so much to my soul and everything inside of my being that at one point I actually cried. It wasn’t a full ugly-cry sob, but there was definitely a jagged inhale. I identified with so much of what I was hearing and my inner Lyss was screaming, “I’m not alone!”

People work so they can have money. And they want money so they can buy things. Assuming that’s what life is. You go to school, get a good job, work a lot and buy shit. A big house, a nice car, fast-fashion, and fucking trinkets. Before you know it, you just have shit. Like a room literally full of all the shit you’ve accumulated over the years. A stack of CDs here, old books there. And oh, look, the sleeping bag I had when I was eight.

The amount of shit we have doesn’t define our success and it sure as hell doesn’t equate to happiness. Because buying things and living aren’t the same thing. Yet, nor are they mutually exclusive. You can have a nice pair of shoes, but maybe you don’t need eleven. You can have a nice house, but maybe it doesn’t have to be enormous. (Do you even use your dining room?) Ignore the regular upgrades and blind cyclical consumption. Society may tell us more shit will make us happy, but take a step back and make that decision for yourself. What do you value in this life?

Schedule time to purge things you don’t need. Things that no longer serve a purpose in your life. And replace them with what we all want more of — time, moments and memories.