From reverb10 today:
Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
I was raised by parents who’d grown up in the Depression, which meant that they saved everything, out of habit and out of a sense that it might be useful someday. Of course, someday rarely came, and if it did, no one could remember where the piece of white cardboard or shiny gold foil had been stored. Add to that tendency the fact that they were both academics in the humanities, who by profession believed that anything and everything could be archived for future generations to study.
Not much was let go. Ever.
Packrattiness is in my DNA, and unless I bring conscious awareness to my habits, it will overrun my physical and emotional space that I’ve worked really really hard to clear. With each passing year, I get more and more conscious of how important this is to me.
As an adult, I’ve had the advantage of moving quite frequently, which encourages you to give things away. I’ve been through an environmental disruption that damaged a lot of my books, which encouraged a large-scale clearing out. I’ll never be one of those minimalists who lives only out of a backpack for a year, but I try at least to follow the “one in, one out” rule. (One sweater comes in, and one (or, better, two) sweaters go to the giveaway box.)
But hands down, the most important experience I’ve had that has helped me let go of unnecessary clutter has been clearing out my mother’s belongings. The first time, when she moved out of the house my parents had lived in for 37 years, we got rid of a lot of amazingly superfluous things, like cancelled checks from 1958-76. But she kept a lot, too, as she moved into a smaller condo.
Over the past year, I had to completely empty that condo and radically cut down on the items that would move across country with my mother as she was resettled into a senior care facility.
Things went to family friends, to charity, and to auction. Near the end, I hired an angel in the guise of a “clean-out service” who emptied every last scrap of junk from her garage and hauled it away.
I kept a few things: mostly family photographs and a picture painted by my great-grandmother that I’d always liked. But I let go of a lot of things. Shoes my mother hadn’t worn since 1995 when her balance started to go. Clothes dating back to the 60s. Furniture. Mountains of papers and magazines to shred and recycle. About a thousand throw pillows. Rugs. None of it useful or to my taste. Things that could bless someone else, and bless me by letting go of them.
Every once in a while, that voice from my childhood would say in my mind “but it could be useful.” And I’d say louder, “it will be useful for someone else.”
Things can be a burden. Letting them go feels good.