My More Than Enough Life

How can I have so much and yet not enough?  

It seems that I do not have enough of the clothes I want to wear or the food I want to eat.  I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do and yet I have so much.

My house gets cluttered, my closet is full and so is my refrigerator.  I have more books than I have read and more movies than I can watch.

And yet, I have nothing to wear and nothing to eat.  I seem to always want what I do not have.  

I know I am not the only one, our whole culture operates this way.  Each new season brings new clothing trends and new food trends, like pumpkin spice everything (FYI... I don’t need that trend).

This seems to be a part of the first world human condition, too much but not enough.  I can not imagine that we are meant to live in this state, the angst and tension of needing more clouding our vision of what we have.  This tension becomes its own type of bondage, we become stingy and entitled whiners.  I have no desire to fall into the entitled whiner trap. Thus, I have developed strategies to combat the too much but not enough situation in my heart and in our home. These are neither new or creative but they are effective:

Be Thankful: I make a gratitude list as often as I remember, and more often when I’m feeling like I don’t have enough.  Today it looks something like this... I am thankful that I have clothes and I will be warm.  I am also thankful that I have a few really cute pieces of clothing that I really love.  I am thankful that my freezer is always full and not once in my life have I really experienced hunger.  I am thankful that my kids don’t experience hunger anymore and take full lunch boxes.

Clean It Out: I have found the more paired down my wardrobe is, the more I feel like I have, things don’t get lost in the closet and I can easily find what I want to wear.

Be mindful when shopping:  OKAY,  this is the hardest solution for me.  I am an emotional shopper, especially with clothes.  I can stick to a grocery list (if my kids are not with me). But when I start looking at clothes, I imagine myself in the outfit and how amazing I will feel and I know it will definitely make my life better and in the cart it goes. 

Have a financial goal: I do much better when I am mindful, have a goal and make a list.  This summer I was really trying to create some fun experiences with our kids.  This required some financial goal setting and A LOT of self-discipline.  I went a whole month without buying coffee at any coffee shop in Torrington (I let myself buy it when we were out of town).  We did not eat out, except for fun meals when we were traveling.  The end result was lots of fun and I never once missed the coffee.

Use the library more than Amazon:  I have to throw this one in because I read a lot (check me out on Goodreads or on Instagram at cristinereads).  There are times when I buy books.  Because I read so much I have had to make some book buying guidelines for myself.  I buy the books my book club is reading, that’s about 12 books a year.   I really like to buy used or from an indie bookstore.  I also buy books when we are traveling. I try to buy books as souvenirs for myself and my kids when we travel by searching out indie bookstores, check out indiebound.org to find great bookstores.  But let's be real, I live in the middle of nowhere, with not a huge library and sometimes I need to use the 2-day Amazon prime shipping.

Splurge on experiences, not on things:  I want my kids to experience life, and not be tied down to things.  They think they are completely deprived because they don’t have an xbox one.  The money we would have spent on that has gone to museum memberships and zoo trips.  They have been to the theater and concerts. They have travelled widely within the United States.  I can guarantee, in the long run that those experiences will be more important than any gaming system that will go out of date.

That’s it! That's how I combat the too much but not enough syndrome.  Just the act of writing this down has reminded me how much I have, I have so much to be thankful for.