We struggle to let go of the very special items in our homes precisely because we first bring them in for a reason. We love them or have given them a cherished value. We saw them as being our link to someone we have loved. Perhaps we received them from a favourite grandparent or a school teacher who was our coach and mentor. Possibly we hold onto that blanket because it was on our Aunt's bed or in a blanket box that our grandmother left to us in her will. Those vinyl records can't be played on any digital device you own in your apartment, but you hang on to the albums because of what? Your Dad had albums of his own when he was a boy so you bought your own collection of them at a vintage market after hearing him enthuse about the magic of listening on a record player. It is this magic which we often add to objects that forces us then to continue holding onto them long after any real functional or practical value has passed us by.
And this is the real reason we hang onto things, because we are people with emotions and feelings and we assign value and meaning to everything we see or come into contact with. We have to do this to stop ourselves getting into total overwhelm or melt down when faced with a thousand and one choices every day.
You see a mahogany box that your uncle stored his love letters in from your aunty before she died and so you give that simple wooden box a value in your mind. You add to it all the memories of riding a bike from your own house as a kid to see your aunty Mabel and uncle Jack. You think of all the ice creams they bought you and some of the birthday presents for your first teenage birthday. All of this heavy emotional baggage attaches itself to the box. Now the box is not simply a 'box'. It has become a store of memory, a reflection of your childhood, a visual link to how you grew up and what you learned from good adult role models. It is so much more than wood and the pins that hold it together or the varnish that allows it to shine, or the crack in the back where it was once dropped on a pavement when your uncle moved into his care home as an elderly man. It has become a part of you. And you wonder why you find it hard to let go of the things in your life?
Everything has meaning and connection - good or bad - because we give such qualities and meanings to each thing we handle. You have my understanding and my empathy with this difficult process. Your home is a reflection of you and your values. It represents your sense of identity, of who you are to yourself as well as to those whose opinion you take on board. Your house or apartment is a mirror of how you feel about yourself and how you see yourself. The furniture, artwork, decorative style, clothing, photographs on display, all of these are elements of you.
In collecting items of value or which you attribute a value to - whether this is still holding each version of the iPhones you have owned, or having three dozen boxes of trainers dominating your bedroom cupboard - what are you achieving? You are filling your home space with stuff you do not need or use and which has been superseded by the latest phone or the newest trainers. We put the image of us as a fashionable, technical innovator on to the phones. You see yourself as a sporting woman with the boxes of trainers. You can only use one cell phone at a time. You can only run in one pair of trainers during the race or wear one pair of sneakers to the shops. But the belongings we fix around us are simply a reflection of the magical attributes we allocate to them.
If you can accept that you have too much clutter in your home, then you must recognise how different you would feel with less 'stuff' getting in the way. Not just in the physical sense but also in the way you would feel liberated with less. Make no mistake about this, by allocating such magical qualities to items in your home that other people would observe politely as clutter, or worse as junk, you are blocking yourself from living a higher energy, more focussed life where your distractions are reduced.
We don't set out to acquire rooms of stuff that we make little use of. Instead we attribute value to something because of the memory trigger it gives and the feelings it stirs within us. We allow this magical quality to settle on it and we end up struggling to know what to let go of because everything becomes special. All that we choose to keep has a powerful hold over us.
Making a decision about such items and their role in your thoughts and emotions, as well as in the practical tasks you carry out every day or week, will make it easier for you to let go of so much. By doing this you will allow so much lighter, more positive energy into your living space and change the focus of your life. Rather than be a guardian or custodian of hundreds of individual pieces of stuff that constantly require your attention, and drain your energy and focus, you can learn to let go of vast amounts of these. This allows you to feel more free and to live a life on purpose.