Letter to my mother:

Dear Mom, I love you very much. I always have and have done what I can to gain your approval. Most of my life, I feel like I have failed at that latter so I am hoping with this letter, we might gain an understanding of one another. First, please, if you have anything left in the house that is mine and you no longer wish to keep, please donate it or throw it out. If I needed to have those last possessions, I would have them already. This constant influx of stuff is overwhelming me and my life is overwhelming enough. I work 45-50 hours a week, workout and stretch another 10, and spending what remaining time I have between taking care of my family and my house and sleeping. I have no time to dig through boxes of stuff. I may have loved it once, but clearly at this point in my life, it is no longer important. I have those things that are important to me. I am good. As you know, I have never been a material person. Things do not matter to me like they do to other people. I do not have to have the newest computer, newest car, newest house, newest purse or new anything. I find value in people and my relationships with them. My house will never be the prettiest but that is ok with me because I am completely and madly in love with my husband and short of sounding too cliche, that makes for the prettiest house I have ever seen. I work constantly at being a better mom and doing things that I think my kids will look back and remember doing with me. That just adds to what I feel I own and again, I am not talking about actual objects. I do not like stuff. I like empty, open spaces and places to roam and feel free and at peace. I grew up sharing a room which is fine. You and my father provided a great life, but I shared space so now I just want space and to be able to just enjoy that space and not fill all of the nooks and crannies in my lovely home with stuff.
You call me a minimalist. You mean it in a not so nice way. I take it as a compliment. Yes, Mom, I am a minimalist. I do not need things to keep me happy. I do not like stuff. Rather, I love my life with my children and husband and my job and the wonderful people with whom I work and please do not let me forget my wonderful social circle at the gym who have helped me find a sense of self. Mom, that sense of self tells me that I am a good person and my values are rich and profound and they revolve around the things they should and those things are not stuff. I hope one day you can accept my lack of value of stuff and know that objects are not all important to me. I understand why they are to you. You had little growing up so stuff mattered. I hope for you that you can find one day that the stuff in my life did not matter. I am thankful that you bought it, but it does not matter and never really did matter. What mattered to me was my relationship with you in which I have always felt a certain amount of strain and stress which I think you have tried to fill with stuff. Can we please stop filling it with stuff? I think it would lessen that stress and strain and help us to gain a new understanding of one another. Think about it....