I drove back from Mo Ranch this morning, staring into the rising sun, chatting with Jimmie (thanks for the deft assist at everything we did!), and pondering this:
What would anyone born almost anyplace in the world at almost any other time in the history of man think about a culture and society that spends so much money renting ugly spaces to store our extra stuff in?
Really? We have so much extra stuff that we pay a hundred bucks a month to stow the stuff that our over-sized homes don't have room for? As a nation we have given rise to an entire industry where we can pay money to have someone store all those treasures in our lives, which we have cleverly disguised as garage sale material to keep it safe: our collections of mismatched freebie coffee mugs, canvass totes we got at every conference we ever attended, toys our children played with for ten minutes that we are now saving for our grandchildren, lawn chairs we are going to repair when we have the time.
WWALS (What would Abraham Lincoln say)? What would Marco Polo say? What would Pliny the Elder say? What about your average Ugandan or Fiji Islander?
I passed bunches of these places and wondered how this had happened. It made me say hmmmm.
Mo was terrific as always. A special salute to the women of First Presbyterian of Fort Worth who all came by on Ellen's instructions and joined the fun! We are also now geared up for Erin's Drem Lanyards at Mo summer camp. I am refreshed and ready to start the summer. Tomorrow we are San Diego bound and are ready to marvel at Max's Touch-A-Truck and see various Thornburgs! Next week it is back to the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas (just down the road from Mo) to introduce a new set of camp counselor's to Erin's project.
Life is good.
I won't start worrying about WWALS or how the American culture and society gave rise to two roomfuls of glass beads in my house until I get back.
At least I haven't had to resort to off-site storage.
Self storage is a $20 + BILLION industry... hmm... Can you think of a better use for $20 BILLION??? Maybe if we valued lives more rather than stuff, we could cure cancer. Just an idea...
ReplyDeleteTruly incredible!
ReplyDeleteThe only people I have even known that used storage facilities were people that were moving or people that emptied out the house of deceased parents or relatives and just didn't have it in them to go through everything. We used one when we were moving, lived with almost nothing for 3 months so our house for sale could look like no one lived there. Didn't sell the house, but come time to move, it was easy peasy since everything had long been packed and stored.
ReplyDeleteAh me, Vickie -- You dinged me with this JUST as I finished cleaning out the piles of clothing from the bottom of my closet. I refuse to pay for storage -- but the underlying disease -- the propensity to own/keep too much stuff -- well, I am determined to improve. When I left, one of the cats was asleep on "Mt. Goodwill." By the end of the weekend, hopefully most of it will have left the house (and NOT so I can replace it with more!!) I may not have paid storage, but I DO have an "oversized house -- now that kids are fledging -- and I am determined to clean it out, and move to something smaller.
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