Mr. Byron Washington, Columnist

“A time to seek and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to throw away” – Ecclesiastes 3:6

I received an email stating that the storage limit for my email had been reached. I would be unable to receive messages due to being at capacity. The company did not encourage me to delete emails; however, the message read, “…to prevent interruption in service, get more storage. 

The company made it sound enticing and noted that more storage was not much. Consider this; however, if all their users pay $2 per month for extra storage, imagine how much money they make. The company has over 1 billion active users utilizing its email platform. The company making a lot of money is not the main reason I did not buy the extra storage. But one reason is that we should not be so quick to increase our storage because it costs us. Yes, it is only $2 a month, so $24 a year. Another is that this email prompted consideration that we often tolerate people, situations, and circumstances, increasing our capacity for stress and aggravation instead of reducing those things in our life. 

On a recent podcast, one speaker said, “‘Yes,’ is expensive.”  By saying yes, I want to buy more storage, I am actively participating in agreeing to carry more junk and unnecessary things. By saying yes to more storage, I am agreeing to waste more time searching for an email because I have retained emails I should have dismissed. Increasing storage in your life without a valid reason will cost you more than you can imagine. 

In addition, when we unnecessarily increase storage in our life, we become vulnerable to being undisciplined. Let me give you an example. My family moves from country to country quite often due to work. Whenever we get ready to move, we have to sort through what needs to be shipped to the new location and what needs to be disregarded or given away. This process takes time on the front end but reduces stress when unpacking in the new location. Many of our colleagues say, “I will pack it all and sort it out when I get to the new location.” We all know what happens – they never sort it, and years later, they are still traveling around the world with boxes of baby clothes, and their kids are now teenagers because they refuse to stop adding capacity. 

My brothers and sisters, July is the midpoint of the year. What do you need to disregard as you head into the last part of 2022? Increasing your capacity is not a bad thing. However, the reason needs to be correct. Increasing storage because we do not want to sort through the clutter of our lives will ultimately cost us and is a sign that we need to focus on our discipline. 

I never paid to increase my email capacity. Instead, I sat down and spent a long time deleting old emails and advertisements and removing myself from mailing lists. It took some time, but I felt good, and my email was less cluttered. Do not increase your storage when you can reduce unnecessary things to make room for what you need.