Downsizing by Choice
Edwin Friesen
Recently, seeing no “smaller appetite” options on the restaurant menu, I asked the waiter if I could order a smaller portion of a featured meal believing that would still be fully adequate. The waiter protested saying he would have to charge me for a full sized serving. I told him that wasn’t the point. To reinforce my request, I offered to pay more than the menu price if I could get a smaller meal. This was even more confusing! I ended up ordering a less desirable menu item.
In many different ways we are being pushed to live super-sized lives. From fries and drinks to ‘monster’ trucks and homes, big is in. We need large homes to house our accumulated possessions. We need large closets to store the clothes we wear and the ones we no longer wear but can’t get ourselves to give away. We need large garages to store our outdoor “toys” and “no longer being used” household items. We have games and puzzles we haven’t touched in a decade.
Lil and I have been empty nesters for a number of years. We have a wonderful two bedroom house, of which one bedroom also serves as a home office; a spacious garage with a workshop; and a large yard. Periodically Lil (None of my stuff had passed the the expiry date as far as I can tell.) fills a box or two of stuff we no longer need and takes it to the thrift store where she works as a volunteer. Here customers practically fight over their good fortune (our cast-offs). And then, after her shift, Lil saunters through the store and finds some really neat (cheap) stuff to bring home and the cycle continues.
To downsize voluntarily seems to go against not only our culture but also against our basic human nature. We have been conditioned to believe that happiness is found in things and if you want to be really happy, you need to accumulate many things. Maybe it’s time once again to turn up the volume on some words of Scripture. Solomon who spoke from considerable life experience said, “Those who love money will never have enough. How absurd to think that wealth brings true happiness!” Ecclesiastes 5:10
Sometime later, Jesus spoke to the culture of his day as well as ours when he said, “…Don’t be greedy for what you don’t have. Real life is not measured by how much we own.” Luke 12:15 Things temporarily enhance our enjoyment of life but if we look to them to find lasting fulfillment, they will disappoint us. Ultimate security and happiness is found in God, not things.
So go ahead. Go through your home and look for things that have not been used in the last year or two. Pack them up and head off to the nearest thrift store. Should you ever miss the item, which is highly unlikely, you can always go back to the same store and re-buy your donated items, at least if they are still on the shelf. It may help to remember that the profits from the store go to a very worthwhile cause.