To Pack-rat or Not To Pack-rat (2019/05/06)

I'm reading in 3 Ne 13.  I come to verses 19 and 20.  At first I see them as distinctly telling me to stop being a pack-rat.  Then I read verses 21-22, and 23-24.  They all tell me the same thing.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal;
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
22 The light of the body is the eye; if, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.

I see these verses as an entire tritise on hourding stuff, being a pack-rat, not being able to let go of stuff.

I'm not sure why or from where I gained the "skill" of being a pack-rat.  I've always attributed it to the fact that my father grew up in the Great Depression, and his father lost their ranch because of it, so he was a pack-rat.  There must be some personal experience I had which made me ressonate with that quality he had and therefore become the same way. 

While I will delve into my emotional history to figure that out, in the mean time, I think I will start to use these scriptures as a template to help me learn how to be less sentimental and to go through my stuff and let it go - either to a second-hand store or to throw it away.

All three of these concepts he gives describe the same paradigm as far as needing to hold onto stuff:

1)Treasures (stuff) on earth vs treasures of experiences with the Spirit and people.  They carry over into the next phase of our lives whereas the physical things do not.

2)Eyesingle to God vs darkened by focusing on my stuff.  In my mind, my stuff gives meaning and definition to who I am and validates what activities I did or experiences I had with someone.  If I realize those experiences are not retained or lost depending on if I still have the physical reminder of them, but they exist eternally separately than their physical reminders, I don't feel I am losing them by throwing away the endless minutia I've collected to remind me of them.

3)Serving God vs Mammon is integrated by the fact that having our minds and focus free to serve God is distracted by having and wanting so much stuff.  So much stuff takes time to collect, clean (if we do), move it around to get to other stuff, keep it sorted in our mind, figure out how to get more, etc., etc., etc.  It is not just our time that it absorbs, but it is our mental energy and capacity it is using up.  We can't have as much of our mind available to God when it also has to keep track of our over-stocked stuff.

Heavy sigh..... I suppose this first awareness is my first big step in the right direction.