I am enjoying slow living these days. It really feels good and I think I can get used to it. I don’t know how long it will last, or when I’ll be “forced out” of it due to economic necessity, but living in the moment is also part of slow living, so I’m going to enjoy it as long as it lasts. I remember hearing someone say, “Nothing is gained by being anxious. Everything is gained by being courageous.” I’d need to remind myself often of that wisdom especially when my anxiety creeps in for things that are beyond my control. Being fully present in the moment is within the sphere of my own control: no matter where I go, there I am (literally and metaphorically).

I confess I’ve done something that went against slow living last week. Cleaning out the kids’ playroom within a few days wasn’t part of my slow living tenet: we’ve been using the playroom as a storage room since our daughters started elementary school, and even some of the pre-school old toys in that room came from Lexington, Massachusetts, when we moved here more than seven and a half years ago! In addition, all their school projects, papers, and art works that came home at the end of each school semester were deposited to that room. Of course, the thinking and intention at the time was to unpack them at some point in the future when we had more time. We seriously didn’t know then that the time we had envisioned for unpacking all of their classroom stuff wouldn’t come for many years—until last week when I had to clean out the room so that S and J and their friends could have S and J’s birthday celebration sleep over at our house.

I always had planned to take the time to clean out that playroom. I’ve been asking Charles to do it for many years, but it never rose up to the top of his priority list. Having stayed at home over forty days now, I realize how fast time goes by just doing the daily household chores to maintain a reasonable cleanliness and orderliness, let alone all other chores to keep a household going, such as grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, etc. And then on weekends, we want to have our family time together, having fun and playing, not cleaning out the playroom-turned-into-storage room. So what did I do last week? I called my old friend, “Will Power” to help! “Will” and I hunkered down and cleaned out the playroom filled with mostly junk if I define ”junk” as “stuff you don’t need or want any more.”

I had many garbage and recycle bags filled with non-reusable stuff that simply had to be trashed or recycled out of the room. I also had many boxes filled with the kids’ old toys, books, and clothes, to give away, and they are now sitting in our garage. Finally, when I ran out of time, I put about 1/5 of the stuff that used to reside in the room into empty boxes, bins, and containers, and transferred them to Charles’ and my bedroom and the guest room. When J saw them in our bedroom, she said, “Now I see. This is where it all ended up.” She couldn’t have missed it because the boxes, bins and containers almost filled up our bedroom along the walls.

So much stuff! As I was cleaning out the playroom, I saw so many toys, big and small. There were many loose pieces of toys as well, including puzzle pieces, Lego blocks, Playmobil figurines and pieces, as well as a variety of block toys, dolls clothes and accessories, dried up clay and Play-Doh, art supplies, so on and so forth. Some gifts, party favors, and clothes were even brand new with all their tags, boxes, and packaging intact and unopened. Some toys I recognized as something they played with for a couple of times and lost interest. But most of all, I was overwhelmed with how much stuff was in the room! Whether we bought them or acquired them otherwise, there was a lot of stuff which no longer served its original purpose. It made me realize how much we take from Mother Earth, to make stuff to buy and sell, and eventually we waste them or send them “away.” But where is “away”? Somewhere on Planet Earth “away” from our backyard, but into someone else’s “backyard.”

Charles recently told me that he read somewhere that the top 5 best toys were listed as: stick, box, string, cardboard tube, and dirt. I had a mental juxtaposition of these five items next to all of the manufactured toys in our playroom. The word “excessive” came to my mind. What is enough? How much is enough? After satisfying our basic needs, when do we say enough is enough? Or, is there an enough point when we are dealing with excess? It seems to me there is never an enough point so long as I think that more is better, bigger is better. The more-the-better, bigger-the better, illusion had a firm grip on me when I was living my life on the fast track. Many times I bought toys for my daughters (as well as for Charles and me) to justify how hard I had to work. It would be more accurate to say, “to justify how hard I had to work at something that wasn’t connected to my heart.” Because the work I was doing wasn’t heartfelt for me, I was easily sucked into living unconsciously. When I wasn’t anchored firmly in my center to pursue my true hue, and to work to express my soul, I was easily influenced by the illusory reward cycle: work hard, spend a lot, and accumulate more because it is good for the economy! Right, the money economy!

Thankfully though, the reality caught up with me to shake me and wake me up. After satisfying my needs, more and bigger did not make things better for me. The more I was dissatisfied with my work, the more I yearned for a heartfelt work, and no amount of toys could fill my heart. I needed the real thing: not more of what I didn’t want, but the one true thing I wanted. One true work I could call my own.

Although cleaning out the playroom was back-breaking labor, it was also a cathartic exercise for me. I was able to purge many years of residual remnants from my prior work life while digesting the truth that no “object” can fill an empty heart yearning for meaning, connection, and expression. My daughters would rather have a mother who is joyful, fulfilled, and vibrant than more toys, clothing items, or other gifts from me. This is also a timely reminder for me as the holiday season is upon us. Instead of getting more things for holiday gifts, I’m slowing down to first give myself the gift of enjoying the season without the usual hurry and stress; and I’m giving my time as gifts to my daughters. For instance, this year Charles and I baked their birthday cakes: one chocolate cake and one vanilla cake; I baked chocolate chip cookies and banana bread yesterday for their after school snack; and I took my time to detangle and dry their hair after they took their showers yesterday, not in a hurry as I used to, but in slow motion, while listening to their stories and savoring the intimate, close, sweet time together to help groom my daughters’ beautiful, long, dark hair. I hope my daughters will remember these times with fondness. I’d love to replace the old habit of take-make-waste stuff with the new practice of creating joyful time, heartfelt experience and long-lasting memories: each loving moment woven together in a memorable temporal mosaic to reside in my heart as well as in my daughters’.