Clearing out, moving on
I have a fair amount of storage in my living room. I deliberately use singular pronouns. The storage is used mostly for my stuff, and I spend the most time in the living room, which doubles as office, sewing workshop, yoga studio, and family space. Thing is, a lot of what is in the storage units is dead-weight: leftover inventory from my wrapped-up textile business, long-abandoned knitting projects that just didn’t work, papers waiting to be shredded, etc ad nauseam.
In short, a clear-out has been overdue for ages. And I started it yesterday.
I’ll be real: clear-outs are exhausting! Not only are you actively cleaning, you are also confronted with your own errors in planning, and trying to reorganize as you go. I was completely wiped out when it was time to start prepping for dinner. We had a weird Italian-Indian-soul-food inspired hotchpotch dinner, and we were all so hungry at that point that it was delicious. Sometimes an appetite really is the best seasoning.
It made me think of clearing out in so many other ways.
Not to be too obvious about it, but I honestly wonder how much useless baggage I schlepp around in my brain on an average day. I have learned to identify emotions as they come up, and — even if I can’t always do it in real-time — let others know when they come from a really outdated place. Just this morning, I got to apologize to my daughter for pushing my irrational discomfort about irrelevant stuff off on her. I’m work in progress, y’all. But also: how amazing is it that I get to tell my now adult child, “I am sorry, I was wrong, it was all about my own stuff,” and she trusts me enough to hold that as true and just part of the package of an authentic human relationship. I have said it before, but I really love my family.
Anyway. All this to say. I am sitting in the possibilities of this clear-out today. It feels tenuous and a bit shaky right now. As if all the cleared-out stuff might settle back in and weigh me down any minute. But I also feel like it is helping me move on. There is spaciousness in my closets and in my chest. I treasure that.
