A fellow friend and blogger described Lent (or summarized the Ash Wednesday sermon) better than I did:

“Our priest said [Lent is] a time to strip away all the unnecessary things we can. … [these spiritual exercises are about] taking away our excess so we can focus on deep things less distractedly.”

I’ve been trying to strip away all the extra junk. I’m not very good at simplicity, but I’m trying. Our upcoming rummage sale is a good opportunity (for myself as well as for you!). I’ve been going through the house and trying to decide if I really need each and every item. Since we moved last spring you’d think we would have done this already–and we did. We took multiple carloads of stuff to Goodwill (put our house on the market in January, so a rummage sale wasn’t practical). But it’s amazing how much junk is still sitting around (junk we moved with!) that we don’t need.

I think part of it is now that we’ve had almost a year to settle in it’s becoming clear what we actually use and what we don’t. So it’s easier to let go. I can let go of some of the knickknacks we never unpacked. I can let go of the spare printer we don’t use. I can let go of the six miles of telephone cord we’ve accumulated. I can let go of the multiple picture frames that have been in boxes since before we moved and are still in boxes now. I can let go of account statements from an account I closed eight years ago.

I also talked to Lexi today about simplifying and putting some of her toys away. We’ve actually been talking about doing this since the post-Christmas and birthday toy explosion, and it’s nice to have it tie in with Lent. Not that Lexi understands it. But it adds a little explanation to what I consider to be a good practice of putting some of her toys away for a while and swapping them out in a few months.

We started putting some toys in a box this morning. I was going for the toys she rarely plays with. The ones that she’s really too old for now. I was decluttering. Lexi was going for some favorites. The truck with the cow and horse, her stuffed bunny’s T-shirt–she even suggested her rocking moose (what? you’ve never heard of a rocking moose? It’s like a rocking horse, only it’s a moose.)

I keep trying to remind myself that it’s not sacrifice on Lexi’s part–she just doesn’t understand what we’re doing. But it seems like eager and willful sacrifice. And that’s kind of cool. I wish I could be that eager to part with my stuff. But I’m not.