How much do you need?

I’m a musician. That’s my job. But I’ve recently been asking myself the question....how much music do I need? Sounds strange, right? Well, considering my organ music as an example. I have over 3,500 titles cataloged, and that’s probably not everything I own. Through the years, I have inherited organ music from family members, had my dad purchase music for me, and I purchased music for myself. I will typically play about 5-7 preludes on a Sunday morning, as well as a postlude. Even going with the high side, of 8 pieces a Sunday, playing everything I currently own, even just focusing on Sundays, without repeating, I’d be looking at about 8 and a half years before I’d need to repeat something. Now, much of my music is seasonal, but still, that’s a lot of music. And so, I’ve purged some. And I’ve also gone through music that I’ve never touched and I’ve found things that I want to work on, things that are fun, and things that I don’t even want to try.

Maybe you’re not a musician. Maybe you’ve got a bunch of something specific. Maybe it’s books. Or CDs....or something else. Do you read/listen to/use all of it? Or is it just taking up space? Maybe it’s time to review what you have and figure out if it’s needed, or remind yourself of why you got that thing in the first place.

It’s easy to collect things. It’s not always easy to review how necessary those things are. Maybe all of them serve a purpose. Maybe not. Or maybe there was a purpose, but now that purpose has changed. This has to be an ongoing process. That’s one of the harder things to do. We can get motivated to go through and determine what the purpose of things are, but does that purpose change in 6 months? In a year? And how do you figure out the purpose? In the past, I’ve gone through our CDs and movies. Honestly, I haven’t put a CD in a CD player in a good 2 years, but I still own CDs. Why? Some of them are autographed. Some have special meaning. But there are many I can do without. Same thing with our DVDs. We stream most everything, so we don’t really need the physical things. However, last week, my wife and I wanted to watch “The Goonies”. It wasn’t streaming, so we played the DVD. It served a purpose.

What is it that you need to determine the purpose of? How are you going to do it? Comment with your feedback.