#32 Let Go
The reason for the topic of letting go is because I have had a weekend of letting go so it’s very timely for me. After a collision on the motorway last week (not my fault), the lovely insurance people informed me quite coldly that my car was a total loss. Now of course I know it is just a car and that of course it’s much more important that I wasn’t injured. BUT the thing is to me, it wasn’t just a car. It was my pride and joy, my dream car that I had always wanted and I bought it with money that I inherited when my mum died. It made me happy so naturally there are a lot of feelings attached to losing it.
So to help myself let go of any negative feelings about the car, I embarked on a weekend of de-cluttering which snowballed into another experience of letting go. I am a bit obsessed with house de-cluttering programmes on Netflix at the moment - anything to do with organising cupboards, throwing stuff out and creating a lovely calm environment to live in. Recently I have become aware of how much clutter I am living in and decided to embrace the challenge of sorting it out room by room.
So I spent a small fortune on boxes, containers of all shapes and sizes, drawer dividers and bin bags. Starting in the kitchen (already prepared myself that this is not going to take just one weekend), I started by getting absolutely everything out of cupboards and drawers to see what was there. Now I have always suspected I have hoarding tendencies when it comes to stuff but I was surprised at some of things I found:
3 packets of Spanish paella rice, 3 jars of mustard seeds (so easy to assume it’s not there when you can’t find anything)
A packet of slim-a-soup from 2004 which means that it was already out of date when I moved house 8 years ago!
A large cookie jar in the shape of a cow that used to go ‘moo’ when you opened it but lost it’s moo a long time ago. I don’t even eat cookies so not sure why that has been given prominent shelf space for so long
Too many unused Christmas gifts including a set of vinegars, stencils to sprinkle chocolate on top of coffee and a number of strange kitchen utensils that I have no idea what they are for
WAY too many mugs - so many that the whole village could come for a cup of tea, despite the fact I only ever drink out of 2 mugs
A shelf from my new tidied kitchen cupboard
I had to be ruthless which meant letting go of things that I had kept for a long time, partly for sentimental reasons (not the slim-a-soup) and partly because they had just been hidden in the clutter. So I adopted the Marie Kondo method (for anyone who doesn’t know, she is a Japanese organising consultant) which is to only keep things which bring a spark of joy. Isn’t that a great way to think about it? It may have brought joy at one time but it may bring more joy now to someone else who buys it at a car boot sale.
Although there can be emotions that arise letting go of material things, a lot of the time we need to let go of feelings associated with people, experiences or circumstances. Whether it is things that happened to us that we rather hadn’t, relationships that didn’t work out, the death of family or friends, unrequited love or just a crappy week. We need to find a way to let go of things that we can’t change and look forward to find the positive because harbouring negative thoughts is not good for us.
Letting go creates space for better things in our life so I got in my car one last time this morning and thanked it for the joy it brought to me before it was taken away.
““Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be””
