Building Bigger Closets?

The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Undoubtedly, one of the down sides of living in a historic home is the lack of closet space. As I was moving stuff in, I had to use both my closet and an armoire and even then was just barely able to accommodate the same clothes I had stored in my previous closet. Why were they built so small? Well, the culture and life style was different back in 1917. There was a war on for one thing. People didn’t have endless outfits to choose from and they didn’t go clothes shopping every week. Even moderately well off people had fewer clothes than now, though I would wager much higher quality and longer lasting.

One renovation trend I’ve seen recently is actually taking a spare bedroom and using that space to make a master bath and walk-in closet for the master bedroom. Wow, that is a big closet! Fast fashion and clever advertising drive people to buy more to keep up with the latest trends. Unfortunately, the quality of the clothes is often compromised to reach a price that is considered a bargain. And of course, closets aren’t used only for clothes. They also hold shoes, accessories, seasonal decor, and tons of stuff that doesn’t get a lot of regular use.

I am reminded of the parable in Luke about the rich man with an abundant harvest. He thinks to himself, “What shall I do, I have no place to store my crops?” So he decides to tear down his barns to build bigger ones to hold all of his abundance. Then he will be set for years to come and he can take life easy, eating, drinking, and making merry. But God speaks to the man, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you. Then who will receive the abundance you have stored up?” (my paraphrasing, exact text https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+12%3A16-21&version=NIV)

Life is short. This probably seems even more true now than when I wrote the first draft of this post two weeks ago. A closet full of clothes worn a few times before disposal seems more superficial when you’re watching the news about thousands of people dying from a virus than it did when you were shopping on your day off. Is there anything inherently wrong with having a lot of clothes, or a walk-in closet? No, but if you are about to start tearing out walls so that you can put in bigger closets, consider if this will lead to greater happiness or not. Likely not. Many trends now are leaning toward a simplified life style, Minimalism, Zero Waste, Marie Kondo, etc. They all have some value. And if not everyone can be fully committed to such life styles, I think they hold some attraction for us all. They offer a breathe of fresh air and a reminder that “life does not consist in an abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15)”. A reminder that a simple life, lived with contentment, yields greater joy than being driven by the latest fads and clever advertising which claim to offer you something, but end up taking from you instead.

What if, instead of building bigger closets, we learned to be content with the fewer contents the smaller closets hold?