As I said last week, there are too many choices in our first world, and that creates clutter.

So now, I need to follow my own advice.

The other day, I was in the basement when I noticed a couple of packages of soap on my supply shelves. (I keep supplies and canned food in the basement because of limited space upstairs.)

I’d forgotten I had that soap. It was just a basic brand from the dollar store, but it’s still soap, and it will do its job whenever I remember to bring it upstairs and use it.

Did I forget to use soap in the shower? Am I hygienically challenged? No, quite the opposite. In the bathroom upstairs, I have several bottles of body wash in the shower (I use them interchangeably, depending on my mood), plus more in the vanity cabinet, and quite a few bars of soap in the vanity drawer.  In fact, I clearly have more body wash and soap than five women could use in a month. But why?

Because there are so many choices.

The soap I found in the basement is just plain old soap, not white jasmine, or sweet pea, or rose hip and patchouli nurturing nectar, as I actually have in the shower right now. But if I came in hot and sweaty from gardening, that basic soap would do the job just fine.

Years ago, I used to visit my great aunt and uncle, who spent their summers in a three-room cottage in rural Michigan, not far from Lake Michigan. They had an outhouse, but no bathroom. On the outside of the cottage was a shelf with a metal bowl and a white bar of soap. You filled the bowl from the nearby pump, and washed up in that bowl using the white soap. You dried off with a nearby towel. Simple.

My great aunt was a happy, lovely woman. I don’t think her life was diminished each summer because she had no body wash, no shower gel and no shower. She managed just fine.

I think I can learn a lesson from that.