Somewhere on list of the Seven Deadly Sins is Gluttony, a vice that often loses out in the limelight to some of the flashier sins. There's a list of Seven Virtues, also, and on that list Temperance sits quietly in the corner.
Faith, Hope, and Charity really do deserve the most attention in this roster of virtues, but Temperance is still vital to us. Temperance means knowing when we've had enough, and then not taking more.
For me, I know that I have too much stuff when my stuff start to get in the way of doing what I want. That can be little things -- about 2 years ago, I realized that I had so many plastic kitchen storage containers that I could never find the right lid or the right bowl. I spent about 10 minutes emptying out the entire shelf of containers. I decided to keep only two kinds of containers: a set of microwaveable glass bowls with lids, and a pile of stackable, rectangular plastic containers. (Stackable means the containers store in a small space, and rectangular means that they waste less freezer space than round containers would). Getting rid of all the other containers was momentarily traumatic. But the clean, organized shelf made up for the trauma.
In a similar vein, when it starts to get really, really hard for my boys to keep their room clean, I know that the real problem is not all the stuff on their floor and their beds -- that's the stuff they like enough to keep getting out. The problem is all the stuff that is still in their drawers and shelves that they do NOT want, but that is taking up valuable space.
But that's a topic for a different post. This blog entry is getting over-full, and it's time to say "enough".
Faith, Hope, and Charity really do deserve the most attention in this roster of virtues, but Temperance is still vital to us. Temperance means knowing when we've had enough, and then not taking more.
For me, I know that I have too much stuff when my stuff start to get in the way of doing what I want. That can be little things -- about 2 years ago, I realized that I had so many plastic kitchen storage containers that I could never find the right lid or the right bowl. I spent about 10 minutes emptying out the entire shelf of containers. I decided to keep only two kinds of containers: a set of microwaveable glass bowls with lids, and a pile of stackable, rectangular plastic containers. (Stackable means the containers store in a small space, and rectangular means that they waste less freezer space than round containers would). Getting rid of all the other containers was momentarily traumatic. But the clean, organized shelf made up for the trauma.
In a similar vein, when it starts to get really, really hard for my boys to keep their room clean, I know that the real problem is not all the stuff on their floor and their beds -- that's the stuff they like enough to keep getting out. The problem is all the stuff that is still in their drawers and shelves that they do NOT want, but that is taking up valuable space.
But that's a topic for a different post. This blog entry is getting over-full, and it's time to say "enough".
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