Candyce has moved in, and the guys have finally moved out. Since she’s working around the clock to finish her senior thesis, her stuff is all over the house in boxes, baskets, and stacks. I trip over a high-healed shoe at least once a day.

Then there are all of the gifts people brought to our wedding and sent us in the mail. All that stuff will make this house nice eventually, but for now, it’s all sitting in boxes. Crate and Barrel boxes. Thousands of them. Cube-shaped white boxes. If I was bored, I could use these to build a Crate and Barrel igloo in the living room.

When I really look back on my life since college, I’ve never had I well-thought-out house. It was usually clean and had some style, but it never became that ultimate bachelor pad every dude imagines he’ll achieve a week after he gets his first house key. You know, that beer-commercial pad where that wows the girl in the sexy black dress.

It’s Biblical wisdom to avoid things that will either be eaten by moths or stolen by thieves in the night. Like all real wisdom, this is true today. Furniture decays fast. A popped seam here, a broken frame there. You spill stuff on it. Technology decays too: you can spend $1000 on a Surround Sound for your “home theater,” and in a few short years you’ll be dragging those speakers onto your driveway for a yard sale. That’s your best case scenario—you own it long enough to get rid of it. That cool electronics stuff is the real reason why people break into your house. I feel like I saved lots of money over the past 6 years by just living simply.

Mother Teresa said it best: “Live simply so that others can simply live.”