One old-fashioned solution to avoid spending your hard-earned dollar on accumulating excess stuff you only use once a year is to learn to borrow and loan items. Its something we don’t really do anymore in this fast-paced, keep-to-yourself society. It harkens back to the old cliche about borrowing a cup of sugar from the neighbor. There is nothing wrong with asking to borrow a ladder once a year from your brother so you can pluck all those pesky leaves out of your gutters in the fall. Is it really worth the cost of buying and storing the ladder when it gets maybe five hours of use each year? I say no.
There is a psychological cost to owning too much stuff, as well. The more stuff you have the harder you have to work to keep it. The extreme of this is buying a giant house and expensive boat and then working 75 to 80 hours a week to pay for the slip in the harbor, the property taxes, the maid, the furniture to fill the massive space, and so on. When you are over-extended in this way, you have no time (or energy) to enjoy the house or boat.
On the whole, having less stuff is also conducive to clearer thinking. Have you ever noticed how simply cleaning your desk or office or living room promotes a feeling of calm and sense of clarity? Too much stuff is like static on the TV — you can’t really see the true picture in life. In the past two years, I have both borrowed and loaned maternity clothes. During my first pregnancy, during the summer in California, I only had to buy a handful of maternity clothes because most were loaned to me by a friend. After my second pregnancy, in Minnesota during the winter, I bought many winter and warmer items and have now passed them on to a sister-in-law who is pregnant.
Like the example above, sometimes it isn’t a clear-cut exchange. Maybe we won’t ever need something from that person who borrowed our cordless drill, but possibly they will loan someone else something someday. And sometimes the favor is returned in a different form. For instance, we’ve borrowed a ladder from a neighbor, and every time it snows, my husband takes his garage-sale bought snowblower and plows that neighbor’s sidewalk and driveway. Although I’m sure my husband would have done it anyway, it’s still an example how we each create a community when we reach out to others.
And by taking that step and knocking on a neighbor’s door, we also have a very good chance of striking up a new friendship, which is worth more than anything you can buy.
