Holding Fast and Saying No

Boat life taught me that needs and wants are two very different things; however, a very thin (sometimes seemingly invisible) line separates the two. Aboard, my husband, puppy, and I only collected what we had a use and a storage place for. Now, with 1000+ square feet in my new house, I'm finding lots of places for new things. I feel like I have the "want devil" on one shoulder, whispering sweet decorating ideas in my head (zebra patterned rug here, bamboo dish rack there) while the "need angel" whispers in my other ear that happiness does not depend on what I have, it's who I am, so log out of Amazon.com and get outside or grab a book. 

The zebra patterned rug and bamboo dish rack are things that I have gone round and round about in my head - need or want, need or want? I have a 9 x 10 ft spare room upstairs that my husband and I have designated as our office. I'm typing here now at a narrow wood table on which my laptop sits surrounded by simplicity. We like it this way - small black chair, a few pictures we mean to hang, dresser that holds odds and ends. Yet, when I leave the room and return, I notice a big empty space in the room. The first night after setting up this room, immediately I thought, "We need a rug to go there." Three days later after picking out a zebra patterned rug (to match the black chair) I realized that the drive to decorate has been hard-wired into my soul! 

To rug or not to rug - that is the question.

I told myself that I need to get a rug for that empty space. I think about that rug each time I come upstairs, but I'm holding back. I will not purchase that rug because, even as stupid and meaningful as it may seem, I will not go back to a lifestyle that I used to have. I used to consume, collect, and categorize (in drawers, boxes, and storage areas), and repeat the cycle over and over ending up with so much stuff. To date, at my father's house where I grew up, six large blue Tupperware bins sit in a closet waiting for transport either to a dumpster or my new home. Filled with photo albums, love notes, stuffed animals... they probably will never find their way to me - because I don't have a place for them. The photo albums probably keep those, but everything else that I collected through the years has lost it's place in my life. 

And that is what I do not want to do again - become an empty consumer that is owned by stuff. I don't want to have bins and bins of things that really didn't need in the first place, and I want to avoid having cabinets and closets packed full. That is why I also will not buy the bamboo dish rack, even though I really feel like I need one to naturally dry my dishes. But I know for sure that the truth is I don't, because my dishwasher (turned off) works just fine.