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The bear family enjoyed the good things in life as much as anyone else.
They enjoyed good food and good times.

They enjoyed a snug tree house and a comfortable chair before a crackling fire.

They enjoyed books and music, toys and games, quilts and cuckoo clocks.

But sometimes it seemed, especially to Mama, that perhaps the bears were enjoying too much of a good thing. It was also clear to Mama, as she managed the tree house, that they had a problem — a problem that came under the heading of Too Much Stuff.

From The Berenstain Bears: Thinking of Those in Need, Stan and Jan Berenstain (1999)

Mama Berenstain is onto something. For the past year or so, I’ve been wrestling with my relationship with stuff.

We moved last summer. Nothing puts you better in touch with your accumulation of junk than having to box it up and move it to a new place. And as the Berenstains point out: “Almost all bears discover, in a little while, that what they’ve outgrown makes quite a pile.”

Of course, the problem is we don’t think of any of our own stuff as “junk”. My audio cassette collection from the 80s, for example contains irreplaceable classics. Besides, one day cassettes might make a comeback like vinyl.

A few events over the past year have been helping me overcome my attachment to possessions. Last spring we used part of our tax return to buy bicycles. Nothing fancy, just a matching pair of CCMs from Canadian Tire. And our neighbours gave us a bike trailer for the kids. I imagined idyllic family bike rides. We had a few. And I used mine to commute to the train station. I even started to trick it out. Added a mirror. A light. Fenders. Then, just a few weeks before I left work, someone who must have noticed all of my improvements decided he had to have it for himself. So he cut the lock, donned my helmet and rode off.

A few months later, I left the door of our car unlocked. We’d used the GPS that night. We forgot to bring it inside. I can’t help but picturing the guy who stole my bike trying to fit his newly acquired GPS onto the handlebars.

Now that we’re on one income and paying a higher mortgage, we’re thinking a little harder before just going out and immediately replacing these items. And I’m saving up my Canadian Tire money.

In early February, I travelled to Nicaragua for a church-related trip. My suitcase spent a night in Miami. And I wore borrowed shorts. It seemed like an inconvenience. But that small suitcase packed with a few essentials contained more clothes than most Nicaraguans own. Context.

And a couple of weeks ago we returned from a trip to Florida. My ipod did not. If there’s any one electronic gadget that’s ever felt like an extension of my very being, my ipod was it. I hope it’s found a good host.

So, slowly, I’m learning to detach myself from my possessions. A little book by Peter Walsh (the guy from TLC’s Clean Sweep) is helping me learn how to manage my relationship with the few remaining possessions that I haven’t lost or had taken from me. It’s called It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. I’ll review it here next week.

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