wastefulness

Here's a mumble-jumble of thoughts in my mind on wastefulness.

#1 - I clean houses for people. The thing that I have observed the most is the quanity of things that people have. It truly amazes me. As I clean, I think, "One of the downfalls of America - commericalism". American people have to have just to....have. (Does that make sense?) I'm not talking about a shelf full of books. What I see is just stuff. Stuff that's not used. Stuff laying in piles. Just stuff, stuff, stuff. Sometimes after work, I want to come home and purge my bedroom. I am just reminded not to be consumed with having things. People have things and are not happy. It's so wasteful to have too much stuff.

Which leads me to my second point.

#2 - I believe that sometimes, Americans are too busy. Disclaimer: I know that there are seasons in time when we are busier than others. However, I think because we are too busy, we waste money. Example #1, if someone is constantly running helter-skelter, the tendency is to continually eat out which equals extra money. Example #2, if we're too busy, we tend to waste money by carelessness such as misuse and misplacement. I think about a family that I work for. They are so busy with activities, they don't have time to care for their things (ie - in laundering, in use). Things get thrown around and beaten up so much but because they have the money to replace, it doesn't matter. That thinking is so wasteful, it makes me sick. We don't need a lot of things to live. My opinion is better quality, high price, and smaller quantity is more efficient than poor quality, low pice, and big quanity. By not taking care of things that we have purchased with the money that God has allowed us to have, we are displaying an attitude of wastefulness. Ok, I'm not saying that we need to live in a hole and eliminate our activities just to take care of our things. But I contend that, at times, there are things in our lives that can be eliminated so that we are not constantly running about hurried-scurried with our brains fallin' out. I've just been irritated by some things, as you can tell. I typically only write opinion posts after I've been irritated.

Which leads me to my third point.

#3 - No, I am not an environmentalist. No. No. No. However, living like the typical American is wasteful. Think about all the plastic that has been thrown away. Think about all the paper we consume. Think about all the extra stuff we have. Think about the time and energy we waste running frantically from place to place because it's required by society. YES, I know that the earth was created by God for us to use and enjoy but that doesn't mean that all of sudden, we just spend, spend, spend and waste, waste, waste. That's not being a good steward.

I just think it's better to live a simpler life. It's good to drive places and enjoy the things that are around us. It's good to try to grow (some) of our own food. It's good to recycle (to an extent, not overboard and weird). It's good to give away things that we don't use instead of throwing them away. It's all good.

It's all good.

Was that a mumble-jumble?