April 3, 2011

The Story of Stuff

Have you ever seen this video or heard of the Story of Stuff Project? It's really worthwhile to spend a few minutes watching the video in its entirety.  Pour a cup of coffee or glass of wine (depending on time of day, or not) and just watch, it will change your view on "stuff".
Now I enjoy, have and buy a bunch of "stuff".  I am not proud of some of my attachments to stuff and thus I am continually streamlining.  I hate the idea that:

Thinking of time brought me back in time, college days to be exact. Here's my story of "stuff":
College Student-Athlete meets another College Student-Athlete, fell in love.  We had no money, we had no "stuff", we were (and still are) so happy:
Love This Guy

We lived in an adorable 500 sq.ft Mother in Law house in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. It looked kind of like this:
Adorable!

Beatrice and her husband owned the front home.  They had a huge canary aviary window that we would pass on the way to our unit each day.  I think she had over 50 birds:
Hello to Yellow Every Day

For some strange reason, Beatrice also had 2 pet tortoises that lived in a dog house behind our unit:
Tortoises as Pets?
 
She also had a lovely fountain in her garden that sat right outside our front entry:
The Sound of Water

I will always remember our simple life at 3630 1/2 Seneca.  We had a lot on our plates as full time student athletes putting ourselves through college. But we also had a lot of time to enjoy: 
  • Dates at the Par 3 down the street,
  • Runs in Griffith park
  • Afternoons in Long Beach
  • Day trips down to San Clemente or up to San Luis Obispo
  • Time with great friends in our teeny backyard (with the tortoises)
Married with children has added more demands to our time, but I try to remember and emulate the bliss of the simple days we had. Our lack of "stuff" did not amount to lack of quality of life.  Because we had no money we never spent time searching, shopping or accumulating stuff.  How archaic!

What's your story of "stuff"? I would really love to know!

Thanks for visiting and thank you for commenting!

2 comments:

simply brookes: said...

gosh, this might be my fave post. The simple days, eh? Fully agree. Having many moves under our navy belts, one thing moving does, helps you get rid...As we face yet another move, I'm happy to know I will downsize even more. The feeling is always the same, freedom with less.

In the end all I need is my fam, my good peeps and a few of the things I love and as I age, that gets less and less.

Great post, H.

H Young said...

Thanks Wendy! I always use the question: "would I keep this if I was moving?" when I work on clearing through clutter.

Keep it simple, meaningful, beautiful.