The Art Of Letting Go
I had the best mother's day today. I had the most amazing afternoon spent...cleaning my house. I'm not talking about vacuuming and dusting I'm talking about serious, deep cleaning. After a beautiful service at my Nanny's church, delicious BBQ at Big D's, receiving lovely gifts from my husband, mother and grandmother, I went home, put my son down for a nap, changed out of my new dress, put on a tank and some shorts and got to work.
Why did I commit one of the biggest mother's day no's no's? Because that's what I had been looking forward to all day and it's all thanks to my dear friend Meredith Bushman. I went to Mere's house on the Friday before mother's day weekend and, though I'd been there once before, that day I spent a good amount of time there and really got to soak the place in. I felt so calm and relaxed in the Bushman's home. There was such a sense of calm you couldn't ignore. As I spent time in all the different rooms there I noticed a theme. Everything was in it's place and every place had just the right amount of things. If my house becomes a wreck it takes me a whole day to tidy up. It probably wouldn't take more than thirty minutes to tidy up Mere's house and it's not because her place is small, it's two stories, and it's not becuase she lacks a toddler either. But that Friday I just couldn't figure out what made her house so different from mine, yet. After I'm done spending an entire Saturday cleaning up my house I don't feel like I've accomplished much at all. I look around and something's just off but I can never put my finger on it.
I follow a group on Facebook called At Home With Kristyn Cole and in it all these ladies post pictures of their beautiful homes, showing off their decor and style. Many of them are into the farm house look and have all white walls. I look at their homes and then I look at mine and think that if I paint my walls white my house would look as serene as theirs. Alas my walls are grey, it's a lovely grey, but I had convinced myself that it was my grey walls that were keeping me from having a care free environment. Sitting here now I can't even recall what colour walls Mere had and that's because it was not the colour of the walls that made her home feel so calming. It wasn't because she had the perfect this or the perfect that, instead it was what she didn't have.
Clutter.
Each shelf, each book case, each table, each counter had just a few things to tantalize the eyes but not so much that you couldn't decide where to look first. Even when I was looking through the kitchen cupboards to get a drinking glass I was struck by how neatly each dish was placed. She didn't fill every nook, every cranny with every single thing she had ever owned. Meredith is one of the blessed people who have learned the art of letting go. I, on the other hand, am not one of those people.
I have been haunted my entire life by that nasty little word, clutter. I have spent my life living amongst my clutter and have been plagued by the agony of never feeling permitted to let things go. No one person ingrained this into me. My life, more or less, was the perfect storm for birthing a hoarder. A have several family members on both sides who keep everything, its in my genes. I have experienced significant, traumatic life events that triggered my prepubescent brain to reel at the thought of letting go. Lastly, I have severe OCD and not the kind you see on TV. I'm not Mr. Monk and my house is proof. Clutter, it was destined to follow me wherever I went. Even as a small child I couldn't bare to part with things as trivial as McDonald's toys, homemade paper dolls and every stuffed animal I ever received. I knew I had a clutter problem as a child and as a teenager but the older I got the more skilled I became at organizing my clutter. This slipped me into a false sense of success. Because my hoards were no longer rolling out onto the floor from under my bed and were no longer spilling out with every slide of the closet door I thought I had successfully overcame the clutter. All I felt I had yet to accomplish was overcoming my clothes hoarding. The only reason I could still see I had a problem there was because it was pretty hard to deny as I thumbed through my closet every day and I passed over pieces of clothing going all the way back to when I was 14. But I was nonetheless convinced clothes were my only hoarding problem. But I was wrong and the constant feeling of never getting the house clean enough was slowly chipping away at my joy and soon I was no longer going to be able to live in that denial.
Thanks to the glorious world of Pinterest I was turned on to the world of "capsule wardrobes". I would look at these tiny, neatly arranged, simple closets and then turn and look at my full to bursting nightmare of a wardrobe and be filled disappointment. I wanted to change but it hadn't worked yet and I had been fighting my wardrobe for over 10 years now. But this time was different. Having been officially diagnosed with OCD a few years earlier, I had spent the past 3 years studying psycology and many different types of mental illness. I knew that if I wanted to stop clothes hoarding I had to determine why I was doing it. I spent time on the subject and finally had my light bulb moment. I had created a mindset that said I shouldn't get rid of any clothes if they are still "good". If something wasn't torn, wasn't stained or I hadn't out grown it; I was being wasteful by throwing it out. This meant that if it was too big I just needed a belt, if it was out dated I just needed to pair it with the right pieces or if I just didn't like it then I should just wait till it grows on me or until I find a way to dress it up just right so I'll want to wear it to justify the money I spent on it. Once I realized I had created this crippling mentality and the guilt that accompanied it, I began systematically tearing down that old way of thinking and let myself know it was OK to let go of clothes just because I didn't want them. But I still didn't completely part with them. I piled them all in our second bathroom and planned to do a yard sale. This would then give me more money to buy more things to spawn more clutter.
I had my yard sale the day after I went to Meredith's and seeing the 100 plus pieces of clothing and the skint few household items I managed to part with only be picked over by a handful of shoppers made me further question my choices in life. I had failed to get the local thrift store to buy any of my old clothes a few weeks prior. That left me feeling really out dated with my wardrobe. But now even the general public wanted nothing to do with my treasured clothes and beloved possessions. What was wrong with my stuff? Why did my house look like a war zone all the time? Why can't my home be as inviting as the ones on Pinterest, the ones on At Home With Kristyn Cole, like Meredith's? As the sun beat down and the shoppers dwindled away my mind circled back to Meredith's house over and over and I was determined to figure out what was the difference in our two homes. Finally, with the image of Meredith's house still fresh in my mind and my precious treasures junk sprawled over the lawn, it clicked.
I was still living in clutter.
Things had taken over my life. I wasn't living in my home I was living around the stuff my home was storing and it had to stop. The reason it took all day to tidy my house, the reason it never felt clean enough, the truth behind it all was my stuff bursting forth from every corner. I loved Meredith's home because it was not drowning in possessions. I hated my house because of the very things I had bought to make me like it. I decided then and there I would change.
Queue guilt.
I went right back to boxing and storing, this time it was stuff that I had crammed into my mother's garage. I was still avoiding my house. But when I opened my shed to put up my totes, my habits of storing vs. tossing were thwarted by gravity. All my precious stuff had fallen over and spilled out everywhere in my shed. It was too hot, too late and I was too tired after my yard sale to address it so I piled the newly filled totes on top of the horror and closed 'er up. I was so angry about all my things being a mess and I just knew important stuff must be lying under those boxes and totes, broken. I went inside and was greeted by the mess my 1 year old had made all day. I had turned him into yet another reason to buy more stuff and he had more toys than he ever needed and they were all over my house. I sat down feeling defeated by the day and couldn't even bring myself to get up and put away the toys. I was so tired of always cleaning. I was so angry about my shed. Then I realized I had five 18 gallon totes stacked in the living room and kitchen that were not going to fit in the shed now. I had put off putting them away for months and now I couldn't. That was the last straw. I had filled every storage spot to capacity and there was no room left. As I laid in bed that night I remembered my journey with my closet. I couldn't let go of old clothes until I knew why I kept hanging on to them. The same was true of my house. I could no longer deny that my childhood cluttering had followed me into my adulthood but now I had to figure out why I clung to my stuff for dear life. If I wanted my home to look like Mere's I would need to let go of more than 60% of my stuff and if I was going to ever make that happen I had to conquer guilt. Why couldn't I let anything go? Laying in my bed, as my husband watched YouTube and my son slept, I found my answer.
"What if I need it some day?"
I couldn't throw away every makeup pallet I ever received or bought. What if I need it for a cosplay or a party one day? I couldn't part with our 15 sets of sheets nor my 12 decorative pillows, what if I want to change back to one of those colour schemes again? I couldn't throw away the candy bar my high school crush gave me, when I look at it I remember that day and if I have a daughter someday this will be a funny story we can laugh at. The pink, black and white bedroom decor I had at 18 what if I can use it again in my house some day? The boxes my wedding candles came in, the orange beach towel I had since 8th grade, the markers my brothers used in high school that they passed down to me as a kindergartener, the fabric scraps from my Halloween costume in 2011, the extra disposable plates, cups and napkins from every party I had thrown since I got married 5 years ago. What if? I couldn't enjoy my present for fear of not being able to enjoy some hypothetical event in the future I would not be prepared for if I threw things away. When I finally came upon this life altering truth I voiced it out loud to my husband, who beamed with delight, because his wife was finally ready to let go of things. I don't know how long I laid awake that night. I couldn't stop thinking of all the things I was going to finally let go of. Once we got home from the mother's day festivities it was time for the real fun to begin. I reopened those 5 totes in the living room and every time I came to an item that I felt was too painful to part with I asked myself, out loud, "why don't you want to part with this?" Each time I answered that question I found it less and less painful to let go the next time. By verbalizing, out loud to myself, the reasons why I felt compelled to hold on to things; I felt validated. And once I was validated I no longer needed the things. The more I cleared out stuff, the less I hesitated and by the end of the day I was freely going room to room chucking things as if they weren't even mine. I'm not done yet though. It will take me quite some time to clean it all. But with every item I dropped in the sacks and boxes marked for the curb, the lighter my shoulders began to feel. It was that feeling of relief that made it easier to throw out more and more useless possessions. It's my expectation that before June I'll have a home that I feel as calm and carefree inside of as I do in Mere's. And that is why I spent my mother's day cleaning my house. I was giving myself the priceless gift of letting go.
Are you too learning to let go or are you a master of it? Let me know your tips for letting go in the comments.
Are you too learning to let go or are you a master of it? Let me know your tips for letting go in the comments.
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