From the Mind of MandoRon

Let me begin by saying that I’m not quite sure where this is going to go.  There’s just been several things that I’ve seen lately that I’m trying to wrap my brain around.

First… the other day, I was looking around at some of the clutter in the house and thinking that it would be nice to have just a little more room.  After a few minutes, it hit me that I’d just have more clutter.  People just seem to naturally fill up whatever space is available.  More space = more stuff, not less clutter.  I told Andrea that maybe we are blessed to have a smaller house than most of our friends.  That way, we’re forced to donate or throw away.  And to really think about what we’re buying.

Second… I took a truckload of “stuff” to the dump Saturday morning.  I had to wait in line for about 20 minutes since there were several other pickups in front of me.  It really made me stop and think about all the consumer waste in our society.  We don’t repair anything, we simply throw it away.  This is true whether it’s furniture, appliances, televisions, cars, or even houses.  I was throwing away some true junk and some limbs.  But I was also tossing some large plastic kid’s toys that my kids don’t use anymore.  Some of them probably could have been sold in a garage sale or donated.  I also threw away a high chair and a crib.  My parents and grandparents never would have thrown out a high chair…  The crib would have been salvagable if I hadn’t left it on the back deck for 9 months…

Third… there was an article in the paper this weekend about how landfills are hurting in this economy.  Landfills are having to lay off workers because people are buying less new stuff and fixing things more often.

Fourth… I read this quote from Will Rogers on Monday.  It’s so true

 ”Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”

What does all this mean?  I don’t know.  I’m just making observations.

Here’s what I do know:

1. My wife is happier when there’s plenty of money in the savings account.
2. The more instruments I buy, the more money I spend on strings and stuff.  And the more time spent on maintaining all of them.
3. My 13-year old car gets me to and from work just fine, but I still want something with more mojo.
4. If I had a bigger house, I’d just have to spend more money furnishing it, maintaining it, heating and cooling it, etc…  And in a year, or two, it would be just as cluttered.
5. Being content with what you have is the key to happiness.  I’m more content when I don’t look at the sales ads in the Sunday paper.

Thoughts?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 5:02 am and is filed under Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.