New stuff is always better than old stuff

My stuff ready to be shipped out.

A friend of mine from Toronto said this to me a million years ago and it has always stuck with me.

We were just sitting around one day and he told me he was going to take a bunch of CDs down to the used CD store to get credit for new things. I had this odd feeling of loss--why would he want to get rid of CDs that he probably once enjoyed and some would probably only get him 25 cents (the minimum they would pay for CDs at this particular place at Bloor and Bathurst).

"New stuff is always better than old stuff," he said like it was so obvious. And it is so obvious. But it is something that I have thought of extensively over the past number of years.

Embracing this has been a long process. I have tons of stuff. We all have tons to stuff. Stuff is cheap and abundant. In the same way that we crave sugar snacks, we also crave stuff. More than we could ever need.

I have been battling myself in this way. There are so many things that I never use, so many projects that I genuinely don't want to finish. And yet I hold onto them... is it my responsibility to hold on to them forever?

How does this relate to quilting? It mostly relates to slow quilting. I don't need to make a quilt every single week. There are many quilters who do and many of their things are beautiful. But I don't need one quilt a week. If I can make one per year, I will still have 50 quilts when I die (we'll see if that happens!). And 50 quilts is way more than any one person could ever need--even in cold, cold Regina.

But new stuff is always better than old stuff, even in handmade quilts. I should think about limiting the number of quilts I have, replacing old ones with news ones. In this small way, I might be reducing the amount of things that pass through me on their eventual trip to the landfill. My job as steward of the earth is to keep less stuff going to the landfill.

So here is my start: a pile of things going out the door. Thank you church garage sale. Now I can get some new and exciting things when I go to preview everyone else's junk!