CLEAN OUT YOUR GARAGE
We all have that one place in our house or apartment where clutter just accumulates almost on its own. In most homes, that’s either the junk drawer, the garage, or both. In my case, it’s a garage that stores half our belongings where our cars should be. It’s the place we all have that one last cardboard box that was never fully unpacked.
Then, there’s our mental garage, full of the emotional junk we carry around, not quite ready to trash but not ready to embrace either. We stack psychological cardboard boxes of memories and keepsakes we’ll never look at but always know they’re there (even the ones that shouldn’t be).
Cleaning out your real and metaphorical garage is liberating but exhausting. It takes a fair bit of time and energy to purge the shit we never use and organize the things we decide to keep. Although, I’d argue it takes just as much mental energy to leave it as is. Just knowing that it’s there and in need of attention but never quite getting it can be equally as exhausting.
The best habit I can make of this concept is to put things where they belong in the first place. Try to make those difficult decisions about letting go of stuff we don’t need at the moment they’re presented to us. Of course, there’s always a pile of shit we have to deal with first to get to square one before we can tackle any habit-forming. This means we need to prep the garbage bags and Goodwill boxes for a great purging of literal and figurative junk before we can focus on building this habit.
I’ve been trying to finish cleaning out my garage since we moved in seven years ago and although I’ve come close many times, I’ve never said: “Ok, it’s done.” I’ve missed self-imposed deadline after deadline, but every time I go in to clean things out, I feel fantastic. The feeling of eliminating that much clutter is incredible. Is it possible I don’t actually want to finish cleaning it out because then I won’t have that experience? Ehhh, maybe. Probably not. I really want it finally clean. That’s why I’m committing the next few weeks to spending a few hours a day to deal with this crap for good and have a usable garage. (I’ll even post some progress pics to Instagram stories along the way).
Most of us don’t need the vast majority of the things we own. Every time you see or hold something that belongs to you, ask if you actually use it or if it’s just there because it’s there. If the answer is the latter, let it go. Then, the things you keep mean so much more.
