Oh, the American car. We use it to drive to and from work, to shop, to transport our kids and our things, to drop things off, to pick things up as well as we eat in our cars, we do business from our cars, we sleep in our cars, put on makeup, shave, brush our teeth, comb our hair–all in the sanctity of this metal box.
Yet too often our cars become dumping grounds for all sorts of things we have used or are no longer using. We throw our fast food wrappings and bottles and cans. We have files of papers, mail, newspapers and magazines. We store clothes and shoes, books and random things like car parts, computer pieces, dried flowers, soil, oil and gas cans and more. Now sometimes these are legitimate things to have in our cars especially if they are things we need and use. But too often they are scattered haphazardly about with no order or organization and many of these things don’t need to be here. It becomes yet one more place for us to store our things without making a decision about them as well as a reason not to get rid of the stuff we don’t need rather than put these things where they belong–in our home or in the garbage.
Fortunately there are lots of great options nowadays so you don’t have to have a car that looks like you live in it. With over the seat organizers, organizers that sit on the seat, file boxes that contain your paperwork which you can easily carry into and out of the house or office, there is no reason not to have a car that functions like a mini office. There is even a seat sized desk that holds a laptop computer and small printer and a place for paper and supplies!
I recall a street I used to walk on and there were 2 cars that sat in front of a home that were filled to the brim with newspapers and other things. There was no room for anyone to use the cars and they had become merely places to store more junk. I am guessing the inside of the house looked just like this and this was merely an overflow storage space! Amazing1
We need to start looking at our cars as something other than another place for refuse and to treat them as the wonderful tools that they are. They can function for us in many supportive ways and they don’t need to be cluttered and overloaded with our many things that we don’t need or use. Systems in our car are just as important as in our homes and offices. We need to know where our things are and be able to access them. We can have a place for our reusable shopping bags, a place for personal products, a place for papers, files and emergency clothing, or whatever we need and use on a regular basis. When we do this, we find our car environments work more effectively and we feel better in them.
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