My son was getting ready for church, and couldn’t find any white socks.  As he finished his breakfast, I had a running commentary in the back of my head; something along the lines of, What do you mean you don’t have any white socks?  I just washed a load of whites after our trip.  I remember washing all your white socks.  How can you possibly not have any white socks?   Thankfully, I kept it to myself.  (Well, I might have said it out loud a little bit.)

Finally, I asked him to go check the basement.  They are constantly playing “gymnastics” down there, and invariably socks get removed, never to return upstairs.  I thought a basement search might turn up a missing pair.

The minute I said the word “basement,” his eyes got big.  “Oh, yeah,” he said, and then, with a slight British accent (please don’t ask why), “I forgot about Blanket’s sock machine!!”

He returned from downstairs with fourteen pairs of socks spilling out of his arms.  Not fourteen socks, mind you, but FOURTEEN PAIRS!!

Twenty-eight socks, now sitting on top of my washing machine, challenging me to see how even the mundane “stuff” in our lives so quickly multiplies and becomes overwhelming.  It’s sneaky….one day you have a perfectly reasonable amount of (fill in the blank), and then one day you look up, and you have twenty-eight of them–or another ridiculous number.  It seems to happen so slowly, so gradually, until that moment when it hits you:  How on earth did I end up with so many socks/magazines/food storage containers/insert your item of choice here?

In this case, not all were his; the bounty was fairly evenly divided between him and his sister.  But even seven pairs of socks seemed excessive when I realized that my daughter’s sock drawer was already full.  (Apparently girls have cuter socks that are much more difficult to let go of.)  🙂

That’s my new challenge to myself:  to look around and do a “number check.”  How many of (this) do I really need?  How many do I really use?  Would my excess be better off blessing someone else?  Is it time to pass this on?

Maybe I’ll start with our books…. (Ack!)