Sidetracked By Stuff. But It Was Supposed To Happen That Way.

Here we are in 2026. Happy New Year!

In some ways though, I feel like a reset button was hit for me.

When 2025 started off, I had the intention to begin my next big reuse project sometime that year. I wanted to create a fixed, larger version of The REUSE! Box Truck tiny house to live, work, and host events. And I was hoping to team up with Cheap Old Houses in some way to find an old structure. At that point, the truck had been on the road for over 7 years and not only was the truck ready to settle down, but I was ready to settle down a bit more myself.

Over the past few years, I've had a variety of ideas for what kind of place I was looking for and what I wanted to do with it. I finally felt good about the decision and was ready to start the process. But the universe had its way of telling me that I wasn't ready. There were some things that I needed to deal with first.

At the start of the year, I was spending a lot of time at Song of the Robin. This is the 85-acre vegan bed & breakfast and animal sanctuary just over the Massachusetts border in New York that I've been visiting for years. And it was during that early January visit that I found out that the apartment at the house would be opening up in a few months. This wasn't my next plan at all, but after thinking a lot about it and talking it over with some people, I realized that it would be a great next temporary step. The affordable rent and serene location certainly helped too.

As I had been doing a lot of consulting with Lisa Robinson, Song of the Robin's founder, this would be a great way to get more experience managing a property, hosting events, building a community, etc. These are all things that I have plans for with my own space. It was also a great opportunity to continue my work with Lisa to update various aspects of her property.

"The Cat Cabin" - a large storage shed at Song of the Robin that we converted into a small sleep and work space.

By the spring, I had started to really settle in and had a lot of plans for updates around the property, but the universe again had a plan of its own. In early May, my dad unexpectedly passed away. As a result, I was back in Massachusetts more often; spending time with family and friends and helping to get my dad's things in order.

While most of my dad's posessions and collectibles were dealt with when he went into long term care during the pandemic, we had saved a good amount of things to decorate if he had ever come home for Hospice care. Plus, after spending almost 3 years straight purging things, I set aside a lot of his smaller collections to deal with later. Well, this past summer was "later" and we decided that it was time to empty out the family storage unit.

After emptying the storage unit, my mom's living room became the sorting area for my dad's "smaller" collections of things.

With my unexpected extra trips back and forth to Massachusetts, I realized that if I had been invested in a structure of my own, I wouldn't have been able to spend the quality time that I did with my family. And I certainly wouldn't have been able to spend the time that I did purging the items. I needed to honor my father by at least going through his items to see what he held on to.

In the end, I'm really glad that I was able to give the extra care to his items, as I learned a lot about him and other family members as well. While it's not how I expected my 2025 to go, I know now that it was all supposed to happen that way.

But I was also reminded how frustrating it is to deal with someone else's possessions. We can't be held responsible for other people's things. And we have to take responsibility for our own things when we can. We can't simply leave these things for others to deal with. It's more than just stuff. It's time, energy, resources, and frustration. This is why I was inspired this fall to do some further purging of my own things.

Consolidating and purging my things was a physical and mental relief.

Especially over the past 5 years, stuff has literally and figuratively gotten in my way. Some of it was mine and some of it was others that I took as my responsibility. But I don't need to be the one purging other people's things. I need to be the one encouraging others to escape their own excess and waste and connect them with the right people and the right solutions. And I need to move forward with my other project ideas.

So here we are a year later and I'm ready to move forward with my house idea from last year. But now I have unexpected good experience from living at Song of the Robin and I'm free of so much of the physical, mental, and digital stuff that was holding me back. And after unfortunately losing another person close to me at the end of 2025, I am reminded that life is simply too short to keep putting your ideas off. The perfect time might never come.

I'm looking forward to taking the next steps for myself and for my work with others to help people create less waste and positively impact the planet. Stay tuned...