I’m in love with a shower curtain.

It has an abstract design reminiscent of a Piet Mondrian painting with bold geometric shapes in golden yellow and sage-grey over a white canvas.

Every time I see it, I imagine how it would make my bathroom look that much more modern and serene.

Price isn’t the problem – it’s $14 at the local hardware store – it’s the carnage that would result.

To match said shower curtain, we’d need new towels and a new bathmat and a new soap dispenser and toothbrush holder; and, while we’re at it, we might as well repaint the walls to pick up the subtle hints of sage and update the flooring and wouldn’t tile look great in the shower with a completely different tub?

And the next thing you know we’re renovating our second floor, $16,000 in debt and living in a construction zone.

All because of a $14 shower curtain.

This is how it starts.

Stuff begets stuff.

When I lived in small apartments without storage or control over wall colour this wasn’t an issue. There was nowhere for stuff to go so you simply said no to the things you wanted and no to the things you didn’t but people tried to foist on you anyway.

Now, I own a three-bedroom magnet for stuff.

Last week, I visited my family in Ottawa and came home with boxes of wine glasses and fine china.  My parents – who lived in large houses with ample storage for most of their lives – now live in a condo and are constantly downsizing. 

While I appreciate the wine glasses (we don’t have enough for guests) and the china (it’s nice to have a bit of family history), all of this adds to the to do list.

Our china cabinets are already filled to the brim so now I need to purge them of things that don’t really belong there (like the mugs and bowls with the gold flecks that we got from Dollarama but have been posing as fancy dishes). But where to put those? Next step: declutter the kitchen cabinets, decide what can be put aside for a yard sale later this year, and oh, wouldn’t it be great to have big Tupperware bins to put those things in? Add on a trip to the hardware store and, while I’m there, would you look at that lovely shower curtain?

It never ends.

And so, instead of spending my weekends writing blog posts or songs or my next play, I spend them shopping and decluttering and organizing and maintaining all this stuff.

And don’t get me wrong:  I love editing. I love organizing.  I love creating space.  

It just seems like every time I have space in my life something comes along to fill it.

Correction: it seems like every time I have space in my life, I fill it.

And maybe in this way, all of this stuff around me is merely a metaphor for the true battle with the stuff inside me.

My mind is a nonstop ticker tape of to do lists and I drive myself to exhaustion trying to complete them because a part of me is convinced that when I do, I will finally be able to relax.

But things are never done.

Stuff begets stuff and ideas beget ideas and every time you add another variable to the mix it compounds the stuff to do and minimizes the time to be.

Maybe if I just put relaxation first, I’d realize I don’t really need all this stuff in the first place.

Yesterday I tried on a skirt at Walmart and thought, “It’s almost there but it needs a belt… and a jacket… and new shoes to match.”

And that’s when it hit me:  

I’m tired of spending my weekends on the hunt for the perfect this or the perfect that. I’m tired of the fleeting satisfaction that turns into dissatisfaction and the never-ending need for more more more.

I’m tired of putting consumption over creation.

I already have more than enough things.

What I truly desire is time: time to write, time to listen and time to just be.

So, starting this week, I’m doing just that: carving off Saturday and Sunday mornings to write this blog, to write music, and to allow the wisdom I need to hear to emerge from the words that always find themselves through creativity to me.

And maybe after that, I’ll reorg the china cabinet and the cupboards and maybe I’ll switch out the towels in the bathroom with ones I already have.

But the shower curtain?

It can stay.

I have more important things to do, and more importantly, ways to be.