A Month of Things I Love

In keeping with the theme of Valentines day I thought I'd do a whole series of posts about "Things I Love" this month. My goal was about five posts a week. Easy peesy, right? It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped and not because I was in a time crunch (but a little because the winter blues kicked in this month). I started looking around my home for these "things I love" and I found very little. Don't get me wrong, it was a fun revelation that I don't own very much stuff that I adore but a revelation indeed.

Whenever I'm cleaning and de-cluttering and trying to unload stuff from my home I have such a difficult time parting with "things." Mostly it's because I hate the idea of a useful thing (however little use it may actually own) ending up in a landfill. It's not so much the "getting rid of" that I struggle with as the "what to do with" that really stumps me. I'm losing my train of thought now... I thought I had a stronger connection to stuff than I actually do.

I like that I'm not in love with my things. In fact, after I wrote the Grandmother's Honey Jar post I realized that any "thing" I love in my house has an intense amount of sentimental value and almost always it's correlated with a very special person or an experience in my life and there really are very few of these things inhabiting my home. I also learned that the majority of things that mean a great deal to me are tucked away and are not in use, much like the honey jar. I didn't realize that I was protecting the stuff I actually care about to the extent that I do. It's making me re-evaluate some of my stuff and I'm trying to come to terms with actually using the things that I do actually care for. It seem silly to have things that actually bring me happiness and spark good memories packed away out of sight.

I love our home, but not so much that I'd be devastated to move out of it. Our love our furry kids; one cat and two dogs. I love my husband and son and our extended family... my side is cooler though, hehe :)
I love Jesus and our Heavenly Father and definitely reading the Bible. I love experiences I've had; traveling; Ireland, Guatemala, NY, Georgia, all of my one west coast trip and the ten different years of camping for a few days in Bushnell IL (in the middle of a huge piece of empty land out in the country) for a Christian music fest where my husband and I first admitted our crushes to each other... the list goes on. These are the highlights I guess. I love being outside, breathing fresh air and feeling the wind, staring at stars, getting dirt on my hands and under my nails and in my finger prints (I'm really bad at wearing gloves when I garden). I like making things; I love creating art. I truly love food and eating. I will not start to list all the food I love but chocolate and pizza top the list. I love to read but don't do so often enough. I love history; learning about history. I love music (but odd stuff most people haven't heard of). I'm starting to realize that if I keep going this post will end a very long time from now. But in the end, after all is said and done, there aren't a whole lot of literal "things" that I love.

This is the lesson I learned this month. Maybe I should have already known this little tid bit about me but I didn't. You learn something new every day right :)