What do you have too much of?

Interesting question to ponder, isn’t it? For my daughters, it’s probably Barbie stuff or stuffed animals. For me, it’s probably sheet music. For my wife, I’d say it’s shoes....but she’d disagree! :-) The reality is that we all have too much of something. Sure, we can justify and explain why, but if you really ask yourself the hard question of “do I NEED it”, the answer is probably no.

Growing up, I used to have too many baseball cards. I collected them from when I was about 5 until I was a sophomore in college. I then decided to throw them out. Just threw them out. Didn’t miss them at all. Then, it was CDs. I sold some and gave the rest away to cull my collection down to ones that truly have meaning for me. As for the sheet music, I have gone through some and pared down, but I definitely need to spend time over the summer going through my music and purging some more.

So how do you determine whether you have too much of something? Ask yourself if you need it. Pack it up and put it in the garage for a month and see if you can do without it. Or just go cold turkey and get rid of it. Or, better yet, choose a few of the things that have value to you and get rid of the rest. Then you have a manageable collection of things that has meaning to you. With my CDs, I kept the ones that I had autographed and ones by friends and bands that I really liked. And do you know how much I have listened to CDs? Maybe about 10 hours in total over the past year. So, it’s time to cull again. Why? Because I have everything digitally. And that’s the other thing. It’s always an ongoing process.

Growing up, I loved my grandparents’ nutcracker collection. So, when I got out on my own, I bought a couple of nutcrackers and had them out at Christmas. Of course, more and more and more were purchased for me. It got to over 25 nutcrackers. I decided to get rid of some and get down to 9. And that’s manageable. Now they’re out all the time, not just a massive pile of them at Christmas. Was it hard to get rid of them? Not really. I thought it would be, but it really wasn’t.

So, ask yourself those tough questions. Pack up a few of those things and see if you miss them. Or comment with what you’ve done with the things you’ve had too much of.