My front door

This is my front door.  (yes, I see it needs to be painted again)  Anyway, do you realize that everytime you leave your house it's going to cost you?  It doesn't matter where you are going or what you are planning to do... you will be spending some of your hard earned money.  Even if you only drive around for awhile and go back home you will have spent money on gas.  Think about it.

I'm just as guilty as anyone else who has repeatedly slipped back into the spend, spend, spend mode.  I see, I want.  Yup, I see things I want and
wind up getting them even though I really want to save money.  Maybe it's a kitchen gadget I believe will make my life easier.  Maybe it's a thrift store find that I've convince myself is a fantastic bargain.  Maybe a visit to the fabric store has me thinking about quilts to be made so I bring home more fabrics.

We are all taught from the time we are born that spending is what we should do.  Heck, sometimes our first real outing without adults is at the mall.  We're given some money and told to meet the adults back at a certain spot at a certain time.  Then, we are also taught to have more and do more than the neighbors.  A bigger boat, a newer kitchen, a fancier car, or even a movie theater in our house.  Get the idea?  It's called "keeping up with the Jones".

What it all boils down to is accumulating stuff.  The more stuff, the better.  So I got to thinking about it.  Is it really better to have an abundance of stuff than an abundance of money?  Sure, I might tell myself that all this stuff will help if for some reason the economy takes another nose dive.  At least I won't run out for a long time. A good justification for my over spending.  But..... will it really help?

Will a few hundred yards of fabric stash pay an electic bill?  Will a dozen tubes of toothpaste in the cabinet buy me a bag of flour?  Will a dozen pairs of pants hanging in the closet do anything to help me if I must pay for medicine?  I hope I'm making my point here.  The point is that I need to stop accumulating so much stuff and start accumulating a bigger stash of money. 

I don't know why.... but lately I've been thinking about how little we owned when I was a child.  We had "enough" to get us by and that was fine.  We didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing or even inside walls in the house but we ate well and were happy.  I want that feeling again.  The happiness that comes from knowing I have enough.  There is no need to accumulate more.  So in my quest to be even more frugal I'm including accumulating far less stuff while getting rid of the excess.  No, I won't go pitching and tossing things just to get them out of the way.  Rather, I will be using up what I have before seriously considering more purchases.