“Our freedom corresponds directly with our ability to walk away from anything.”
Inside Minimalism
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Letting Go of What I Once Decided to Keep
Less clutter without letting go of cherished memories
By Shannon Colton
While sheltering in place this spring, I cleaned out my attic—a looming task that was on my to-do list for years. I went through everything: decades worth of important documents, photo albums, yearbooks, keepsakes, books, love letters, my kids’ old toys and artwork…
My goal was to photograph or scan the important items and memories while physically getting rid of everything by donating, recycling, shredding, or tossing out every single thing.
As I sorted through the items that had so many memories associated with them, I realized this: it is hard to let go of something I once deemed important enough to keep.
These things were important enough for me to move them in boxes from house to house over years which turned into decades. It felt strange at first to dispose of some of these things.
But then I reconciled that even though I had chosen to keep these items in the past, today I am choosing to do away with them. I now know that I’d rather have a digital photo of my kids playing with their favorite stuffed animals than to have the actual items—musky and old, stuck in the attic.
So I sorted through it all and smiled when memories were sparked. I captured photos and scanned documents here and there, and I pushed through those uncomfortable feelings of letting go and kept moving toward my goal.
Now I feel free. I am free of the burden of holding onto all the stuff. The relief gained from simplifying and living with less is worth the effort of letting go.
Resources
Here are the resources I use for donating/disposing/selling items in my hometown in California:
Local homeless shelters: I like to contact local shelters and nonprofit community organizations first to see if they can take my donations. Often they will take my household items, clothing, and old holiday decorations.
NextDoor: convenient way to give away or sell items within my neighborhood.
Salvation Army or Goodwill: where I donate items that my local resources do not take (you can schedule the Salvation Army truck to come to your home to do a free pickup).
Threadup: I love this free service for cleaning out my closet (clothes, shoes, and handbags).
Mobile shredding service: I hired a mobile shredding truck to come to my home and shred 12 bins of outdated important documents—took less than 10 minutes, the cost was minimal, and I could watch a video screen of the papers getting shredded inside the truck.
Local library: our local library has a “friends of the library” nonprofit that accepts used books.
Local consignment shop: for selling furniture, art, and household decor.
3 PM Happiness Updates
What are you happy about today?
By Joshua Fields Millburn
At my former job, as a regional manager for a large telecom company, we sent midday sales updates every day at 3 pm. Nobody enjoyed this ritual. We didn’t look forward to sifting through the numbers, adding them up, formatting an email, and sending it to our bosses.
We especially didn’t enjoy sending these updates when sales were poor, because we knew it would earn us a phone call from the boss. And god forbid if you were late sending the update: that was an unforgivable sin.
It was all very stressful.
On a cold day in January, around 2:50 pm, I was sitting next to my boss in his office as the sales numbers started pouring in from my various stores. Knowing sales had been slow lately, he said, “I hope we can report something that makes us happy at 3 pm.”
I wrote down that sentence as soon as he said it.
He wanted some sales numbers that would make us happy, but I heard something more profound. You see, regardless of the sales numbers, and regardless of what’s going on in our lives, we have many things that make us happy.
If the sales numbers are down, if life is throwing you a curveball, or if it feels like nobody cares about you, it is difficult to find something to be happy about: but you know, deep down, you have so much to be grateful for—you have so much to be happy about.
So for the rest of the month, starting today, I’m going to send a 3 pm Happiness Update via Twitter. It will contain one thing that makes me happy, grateful, or thankful that day.
Care to join me? What are you happy about today?
A Little More of Less
A few other articles we think you might enjoy…
→ Relax Into Structure in Your Day by Leo Babauta
→ Book Clutter (Podcast Episode) by The Minimalists
→ Healing Through Silence in an Age of Noise by Egypt Iredia
Are any of your friends interested in minimalism or living simply?
If so, please invite them to subscribe.