This post was originally published on May 26, 2020.
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I’m not sure if this fact has come across in the past year, but I really like stuff and I really like keeping it. I’m what you’d call a hoarder collector. A non-minimalist. I enjoy being tidy and neat with all of the things I like to collect and keep forever and ever. I find the challenge of organizing it all to be like a fun puzzle. Which is interesting because I typically don’t care much for puzzles.
Even if I never go back to look at it or use it, I’ve got it for that just in case scenario. Anyone with me?
Oh, but all the stuff I keep is valuable! I grew up in a household where there were piles of model railroad magazines in common living spaces and just so much clutter and nothing seemed to have a place and nothing was in its place.
Because of that, it’s super important to me to have a place for everything and everything happily living in its place. Or, at the very least, hidden away safe and sound until I figure out where it should live.
However, this is not the story of how I store the things I like to keep around. This is the story of how I let go of the things I no longer wanted to keep. Moving was the catalyst that inspired this exercise. Mostly because I didn’t want to move it all, to be honest.
It turned out to be a really great exercise! I challenged my natural proclivity to save and keep in favor of growing and expanding my belief system that I could, actually, live without all of those candles I don’t ever burn. I could get rid of that decorative tray that really doesn’t serve a purpose except to collect dust.
I totally used some Marie Kondo techniques of thanking certain pieces for the role they played in my life while adding them to the growing donate pile.
I’m really proud of myself for how much I’d chosen to give away! Makes it that much less stuff to store and move again! This time around was sooo much more successful than the last time I attempted to purge things. I chose one whole item and threw it out. Purge!
This time was very different. Purging this time around meant not keeping things that began to feel heavy and like they were holding me down. I suppose you could say I was beginning to feel lighter by having less of a load to carry around.
And then I schlepped everything to Goodwill and piled it all in their bins. Closed my car doors and drove away.
To be honest with you guys, though, it was hard. I had to keep telling myself as I took each bag of stuff out of my backseat that I didn’t want to keep these things any more. I had to play psychological games with myself to leave it there. I reminded myself that I didn’t want to move any of it into my new place and clutter it up with things that no longer served a purpose. But I continued placing it all in those donation bins and watched as the Goodwill employees came out to collect it all and bring it inside.
It took a while to process. I wasn’t really sure how I felt when I got home. The next day, I still wasn’t really sure how I felt until, when I was telling a friend about it, I realized that I was grateful for letting it all go.
Isn’t that the way of things, though? You hold on and hold on to things or relationships or ideas or past hurts that really just weigh you down. When you finally take that brave step of letting it go, whatever “it” is, it frees you. And the letting go allows for new and better things or relationships or ideas or healing, to come in and enrich your life.
I’m happy to report that since then, I’ve been collecting more things that I don’t want to keep and will be donating to Goodwill.
What about you, friends? Do you like to hold onto stuff or are you good at letting possessions go?
