Like many of you reading this, I have always had a tendency to hold on to things. Especially sentimental things, books, clothes, furniture, gadgets and paper. Okay, pretty much everything. When I was 30 years old, I still had most of the clothes I had ever owned and I had over 1000 books. 
Out of an unquestioned need to document my life, I was accumulating photo albums and souvenirs at an alarming rate. I had outgrown all my storage.
In my journey to letting go of the stuff I'd collected I had to “unlearn” lots of habits and beliefs that wouldn't allow me to let go of things peacefully. Here are a few of the things I personally had to unlearn so that I could experience the freedom of living with less stuff.
My need to take responsibility for the ultimate fate of the things I own – as if they were people and had feelings. This is what I now call the “earth mother” syndrome. I couldn’t let go of things unless I knew they were going to good homes where someone really needed them. I couldn’t throw anything away that was still in good usable condition. (Kind of like leftovers. I couldn’t throw away food unless it was already rotten.) Once things were destroyed, it was a lot easier to put them in the trash.
I even kept a lot of broken things thinking I would fix them someday. I have to admit, I still have broken watches and necklaces in my jewelry box but I'm working on it. : )
I unlearned this belief to some extent by learning how to donate and give things way like a pro! But there are things you can’t donate, so I had to make peace with the fact that sometimes I have to throw away things that still “work” simply because no one wants them and I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE for the fate of all things. Things do not have feelings and ultimately, everything has to return to the dust it came from. It's only a question of when. Somethings have to be sacrificed so that I can have a home I love being in.
My fear that if I got rid of things I would never be able to replace them. This one was really hard to get over because some things truly can’t be replaced. The solution for me was to question the fear itself. I had to ask “So What?” People and my time can't be replaced either! So what if an item can’t be replaced? Does that mean I won’t be able to go on living? Will my life be irreversibly damaged? I will simply have to suck it up and get used to the fact that the item is no longer available and fill the need in some other way or just learn to live without it.
It’s amazing how we as human beings can adapt to whatever life throws our way. For me, I had to unlearn this belief that just because something can't be replaced it's importance is magnified. By practicing this thought process over and over, like an exercised muscle, I’ve gotten so much stronger. I still have thoughts like this from time to time, but now I stop myself, dismiss them quickly and let go.
My feeling that things I owned were a part of me and if I let them go I was letting go of all the hopes, dreams and feelings I had when I was still using those things. It may sound weird but I honestly felt that by letting go of a book I had read, I would also be letting go of the experience of reading the book and in some weird way, what I learned from the book would be gone too. In effect, I'd be losing a part of my identity.
In my defense, I actually do have a tendency to forget the past. My personality type is ENTP - creative, sentimental, interested in many things, spontaneous and future-oriented. A personality type shared by many people who are disorganized and have a lot of clutter.
I’m always thinking ahead, and tend to take a long time to recall trivial things like the names of movies I’ve seen and titles of books I’ve read. Keeping things was a way of remembering what I'd done and staying connected to who I used to be. I was an idealistic teenager of the 70's who wanted to make the world a better place and didn’t want to become part of the bureaucratic machine. I swore I would never lose touch with that part of myself. I didn’t want to grow up to be just another cog in the wheel of the machine of industry.
What I finally realized was that, as you can see, that part of me was so strong I could never forget that. It IS me. After letting go of so much of the stuff, I realized that I will always remember the truly important things that shaped me and make me who I am today. Whatever I do forget was probably not important anyway. Keeping so much stuff actually makes it harder to distill your experience because you are so mired in the volume of stuff that the important lessons have a harder time rising to the surface!
Eventually, I adopted a kind of “So What?” attitude toward forgetting! We are designed to forget things for a reason! Let’s face it, why do we have to have to remember every detail of our past? Who really cares? What’s really important to remember about the life you’ve lived anyway? Is it really important what the date of that trip to Disney World was? Or is it more important to become the best person you can be and make a contribution to society and the world?
Clarifying my values and looking at my things with a fresh perspective required a lot of “unlearning” the drive to document every aspect of my life. Not to say that I don’t still take photographs or acquire souvenirs when I travel, etc. But I do take far fewer photos, and sometimes my only souvenir of a trip is a postcard. I no longer spend much time creating a museum of my life. Time that I could be spending learning, writing, traveling, helping people suffer less or even just relaxing. If I can contribute more to the world by writing, isn’t that a more valuable legacy than a collection of stuff?
I hope you find this inspirational in questioning your own attachment to things that clutter up your space and drain your time and energy.
