Last week, I spontaneously plunged myself into a huge decluttering journey. I call it a journey because it’s far from finished. I got all my clothes out of my wardrobe. I put them in two separate piles, one for good vibes, one for bad vibes. I wanted to know what was my initial reaction to them. Then I put on every piece of clothing one by one (from both piles) to assess how it felt wearing them. If I feel immense joy, I keep it. If I feel iffy, I inspect why. It took hours but my clothes in my wardrobe sank to a considerably lower amount. Some I threw into the garbage, some I put up on Vinted.
It wasn’t some well-established routine I did here though. I haven’t read Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (if you have, please drop tips in the comments!) and I am not very good at organising stuff as my husband could attest to. It was always hard for me to decide whether I wanted to keep something or not. What if I would run out of clean tops and the only top would be this ugly green tank top I always hated? Or this T-shirt has a cat face on it and it’s in great condition. I love cats, right? Does it really matter that somehow I don’t like this T-shirt?
And there was this mint sheer satin sleeveless blouse. It was the perfect extravagant type of office blouse for me once. Not so out of place but a bit different from all the white, black, blue and beige people usually wear there. It still fits perfectly and it is in great condition but something felt off. Suddenly I was jolted back to a hot summer day of 2016, sitting in a chilly open office. I wore it with salmon pink high heels and some plain jeans. I was covering for my boss while he was on vacation, I distributed tasks, emailed back and forth with higher up people and I was generally feeling like a lady boss. In my outfit and in my temporary role. I loved it. I was a busy bee then with dreams of getting higher on a corporate ladder without giving this idea a second thought. But I’m not that person anymore. I don’t want to work in an office. I don’t want to be a lady boss. I want to be my boss but I will happily wear my Lucy and Yak dungarees while I do that. Or sweatpants, like I do now. It’s so interesting how a piece of clothing has a story and it could be a time capsule putting you in a different version of you. But I don’t want to continue every story I ever dreamed of. And I should not just throw out ratty pieces of clothing. I should keep the ones that give me joy. Keeping something in case of somehow needing it never really panned out, I washed my dirty clothes before going to the supposedly ‘in case of emergency’ ones. Keeping them just clogs my view of the clothes I want to wear, stirring up some bad feelings about not wanting to wear them (oh old people pleaser me, you want to please clothes now?) and blocking space in my wardrobe. Then it became a process of letting things go that I no longer wanted and once I was ready to let go, it made me feel lighter once I tossed something in the garbage or put them up on Vinted. And a bit frazzled, too. I guess this is also a process of grieving.
And then, I vowed to do this everywhere at home. I threw out ratty tote bags I never used, my wizard flat shoes I can’t wear because after giving birth my foot jumped one size up, everything I no longer used and could not dream up a reasonable scenario when I would use them. I tossed out all the masks in our key drawer. I mean, that seriously needed an update. I started to see spots in our apartment where I haven’t ventured for years. I reorganised my messy document drawers and first in my life I decided that I’m not just putting stuff in places where there is still space but I will have separate spaces for separate mindspaces. Now I have a creative drawer with empty notebooks, pens, crayons, penguin shaped paper clips.💜
I started to declutter my digital space as well. I reduced my Instagram following to half and I unsubscribed from newsletters I’m no longer reading. I had lots of newsletters I subscribed to which I haven’t read for years. Sometimes I forced myself to read them and they were genuinely good but I did not want to read them the next time a new one arrived. This was the case with Wait But Why. 10 years ago this newsletter was my favourite by far. I learned a lot from the science articles and I loved how Tim Urban constructed his stories. But I have different interests now and I did not want to read his ramblings for at least the past 5 years (he wasn’t that active, so it wasn’t a constant struggle to keep him in my inbox). But it was so hard to let go somehow. And I think it’s because his writing meant a lot to me once and I thought I should be loyal? But if I unfollow someone it doesn’t mean that I don’t like them anymore or the stuff they do is bad. It just means I have different interests now and my attention is limited. And having unread messages in my inbox clogs my view enormously. I missed a fair share of important emails because of them so it’s time to let go.
I also love the idea of getting rid of (bad) thoughts. I once thought that it’s bullshit but it’s not. There was one line that said this in the Artist’s Way, that I half remember, that went like, once you write down your thoughts, you exorcise them. And in the space they left behind, new thoughts emerge which could mean lots of new things. And I do experience this and that’s why writing is so powerful.
There is also one other aspect and I want to phrase it without sounding cruel. Letting people go. The holistic psychologist’s Instagram account introduced the idea to me that I should spend time with people who calm my nervous system, who make me feel safe. And I do know that in most of my life, people who did not put butterflies in my stomach, be they romantic or platonic interests, and did not put me in that state where I wanted to get their approval and basically chase them, I wasn’t drawn to them and I labelled them boring. I’m currently experimenting with this and I started to notice that there are certain people who I put my guard up instantly, there are people whom I get extremely anxious with and there are people who I can spend time without effort and with ease. I still have people in my life who regularly jolt me into that survival state but I’m both working through my triggers and wondering what roles they should play in my life. Just how you love old parts of yourself, you can love people you no longer want to keep up a relationship with.
I think this decluttering craze came at a perfect time for me. In the past month, I’ve felt that I’m all over the place, wanting to do lots of different things, and this whole process shows me how to reduce my attention to the things that matter the most. I want to have some clear space for new things to continue. Just like how you cut dead and yellow leaves off a plant, it also nourishes your growth to get rid of things that still suck your energy and it hinders you from flourishing. This whole process is peppered with grief as well. Letting go means grieving and I had days when I felt really low this past week. I was extra sensitive, I cried more easily. There are things I still clung onto in myself but I’m not sure what exactly. But I’m going to continue on this journey and see what happens.
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