On this episode of hoarders...jk

Tip #11 : throw it out

This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.

Tip #11 – throw it out

I will admit to not being the most tidy person. I’m not messy, but I did grow up with the mindset around me to keep things because they may come in use sometime, and that way you’ll have it, and won’t have spent extra money on it, and will have reduced reused and recycled and so that’s cool.

And sure, sometimes, that can be nice, but it doesn’t actually work for me, I’m finding.

Additionally, I do feel just like hair holds memory I think the stuff you keep in your physical spaces traps energies and memories too.

Gretchen Rubin said on a podcast or something a while ago that “outer order contributes to inner calm” and for me, she’s right. I feel much more at peace internally and mentally when the physical spaces around me are at least somewhat tidy and clean.

Besides the day to day tidying we all have to do to keep things in the order we like, I’m also speaking to the backs of the closet, the bins of things you don’t really know what to do with but don’t really know if you should throw it away, but you keep bringing every time you move out of guilt and stuff.

The stuff that has weight but no function.

The stuff that carries emotional dust and is of no use to you anymore.

You go ahead and figure out your own dishwasher schedule - this tip is targeting that emotionally weighted clutter in your space.

I’ve been working on this for years. It kinda sucks and is tough to work on when you’ve got kids and a full schedule and work and all that.

There’s always something to get over in order to get over stuff.

Anyway.

When my ex left he didn’t take anything with him beyond what could fit in a rental car and didn’t want anything that he’d left behind so I had to deal with the remainders.

Fine, but it was a lot of stuff.

We’d been married over a decade, and despite moving several times, we’d lived in the place the kids and I are still in for 4 ish years by then, and a life accumulated with 4 other people just has a lot to it, so there was some stuff.

I had stuff to deal with and get out and gone with too that I’d been carrying around.

When the kids were gone over the summers I tackled this pretty actively - I rented dumpsters from the city that they would bring over and got rid of old furniture that wasn’t worth keeping or donating, old things that weren’t to my taste that held bad energy and that nobody needed, the piles of things I thought would be good for “someday” that never had been useful and I never needed to carry anyway.

I threw out the old bed frame and took just about everything out of my bedroom and the living room. I went through the closets and the garage and filled up those dumpsters every time I had one.

It was exhausting. Physically draining to move things around in the summer, and emotionally draining to confront actual tangible things that carry remembrances.

Often I cried after the dumpster would get hauled off, from having more space to let myself breath into, and cuz it’s just tough to do.

BUT ALSO. It is such a cleansing thing to do to clear the physical space in which your soul and body and mind spend the most time.

The home space, however much you have of your own, should be a comfort, a rest, and for such a long time mine was too cluttered to relax, and too full of painful reminders.

I didn’t know what I wanted to replace things with and am still working on it. The intentional cultivation of space and the continual edit and cleansing.

Of course with more resources comes more decorating potential, and right now my resources are allocated to different tasks, but even so, being able to continue the work to clear out, and replace things on my preferences and timeline is incredibly healing.

It's also important to do this if you are in need of healing, but a physical change of location ins’t in the cards for you right now. It’s said that it’s incredibly difficult to heal in the same environment in which the hurting and the traumas and the pain occurred and this is true.

In my instance there were facets of that environment that changed – people and circumstance – so that I was in the same physical place but in more control of my interaction with that environment.

That was helpful.

I managed to heal in the same places of my harm because I was able to have enough control (after situational adjustments that were absolutely life altering and painful and hard and massive) to heal the environment and help heal myself too.

Doing a clear out where you through away all the things that you aren’t using, that aren’t useful, that are reminders of guilt or shame or hurts, and that aren’t like, legally necessary or important, that’s massively helpful.

Do that.

The physical exertion is good for your body (just like, don’t lift your couch by yourself).

The outer order or outer space you’ll have back is so helpful for your inner state.

You’ll feel it immediately.

And it isn’t an emptiness, the suddenly vacant areas where things unused used to be. It is areas for cultivation based on YOUR genuine soul and YOUR actual preferences.

DO it. It feels so nice.

p.s. after you send a big haul to the trash or the dump or take a hefty bunch of things to be donated that are donate-able I highly recommend treating yourself to an evening of things you enjoy, something good to eat that you like, and something to watch or read or do that you like.

Puts a fun end note on an exhausting activity.

xx-Marian