Who are you robbing?

Recently I purged my scrapbooking and art supplies. Truthfully, I use about 5 of my tools 80 percent of the time, I love to water color paint so that is a project I constantly have out on the table. And I love to scrapbook but I tend to do this less of the time. While my water color habits are confined to two favorite brushes, a bag of paints my pallet and block of paper, a very manageable amount of tools, my scrapbooking supply is massive.

The industry is always designing new and fabulous trendy papers and embellishments to inspire even the most left brained of us all. It's a beautiful industry. Sadly, I don't have the room I need to accommodate all that I'd collected, and despite my best intentions when I feel inspired to do a new project I usually find myself at the store buying the latest and greatest papers instead of using something from my stash, my stash was enormous. Many of my supplies had been sitting in boxes for upwards of three years.

Then, one day a good friend of mine got on facebook and asked if anyone had any extra scrapbooking materials they were willing to part with. She had lots of projects to do but not a stock pile of supplies to support her creative endeavors. I looked over at my papers and embellishments almost crying for a chance to be used and I realized that by holding onto these things, I would likely never use, while someone else needed them was robbing that person.

I know it seems  a little extreme, but think about it, you have something you really don't need, and someone else does need it, to hold on to it is selfish, don't you think? Even if you are not as lucky as me and a friend doesn't come knocking at your door asking to give a new life to your dead, hoarded, thing a ma-bob, just donating it to a charity or Goodwill gives it the chance to find that new lease on usefulness.

So, the next time you are debating whether or not to get rid of that thing that has plenty of good use left in it, but is of little use to you remember that by hiding it away in your closet you are denying someone else the joy they would get from using it.

Now it's easy to let it go, isn't it ;)