Yesterday’s post was about finding just the right word. Today, it’s the word “Stuff.”
There’s no better word for all the ‘junk’ lining my son’s carpet. Or my daughter’s entire room. I just sent them to clean it all up, to ‘put stuff where it belongs.’ But where does stuff go? Over time, along with the GI Joes, Polly’s, Lego Knights, and car sets, you accumulate a landfill’s worth of pretty much useless stuff that you’re not sure where to put. Is it Polly? Does it go in the Star Wars container? Is it Lego? I’m not sure. It’s stuff. Some people have ‘stuff drawers,’ but at some point, those fill up too. Some people have ‘stuff rooms.’ Then what?
A few months ago, we gutted my daughter’s room (mostly without her help) and stuffed three black garbage bags full of stuff. Know what? She hasn’t asked for or missed a single piece of it. It’s just stuff.
Adults accumulate stuff too. Some people are pack rats. I think I’m more of that persuasion. And then there are traders. Low end traders garage sale their stuff, make a few bucks, and buy more stuff. High end traders leverage Ebay and make even more money because there is always some sap out there looking for the stuff we’re selling. Then they can buy more stuff with the money they made off the old stuff.
Then there are the huckers. Shauna is a bona fide hucker. If she doesn’t know what something is, it get’s hucked. She gets into hucking moods, downright scary moments where children and couches and old Potato salad everything and nothing is safe from becoming our latest curbside memento. She doesn’t make a dime on our old stuff and we still buy new stuff. But a true Hucker’s reward is in the empty void they leave in their purging wake.
The upside is that after the hucking mood, there’s less to clean up.
A lot less.
I think God gets in hucking moods too, especially with the crazy stuff we pick up along life’s pathway.