How much stuff are you hauling?

​Do you know this woman?
​Laboring to keep this ball of possessions aloft...nearly crushed by the weight of her stuff...dragging even more behind her. Could this be you?!

Last weekend, while in Manchester, NH, for my daughter's robotics tournament, I took some time to visit the Currier Museum of Art.

When I walked through the glass doors into their special exhibit by artist Ethan Murrow, I gasped and stoped in my tracks. In front of me, larger than life, was this incredible, mural sized Sharpie drawing.

"That's how my clients feel before they call me,"
I said to my husband.

​They feel overwhelmed, overloaded with stuff (physical things, paperwork, digital stuff, or even memories), and they just don't know where to begin unraveling it. When we feel that way, it can seem as if we're hauling the full weight our possessions on our shoulders, and even then we can't fit it all and have to drag the rest behind us!

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Does the poor woman get any help? The child looks less like he's trying to prop up the ball of stuff and more like he's just trying to avoid having it fall on him. The full burden is on her!

And yet, there's beauty in this work of art. I admire the exquisite detail in the variety of items, the flowing quality of the Sharpie-drawn lines, and the woman's strong, even elegant, pose.

We can find beauty in confronting our possessions. Do we need to labor under such a heavy burden? No! We can enlist the help of our family (That child is definitely old enough to help!), our friends, and professional organizers (This is what we love to do!). Take a look at that ball of things and discover the legacy of your life that it contains.

We can begin, piece by piece, to untangle the blob of accumulated possessions.

• What does this piece say to you?
• If this is what your "before" picture feels like, what would your "after" feel like?
• How amazing would it feel to untangle your blob of stuff?