The Winter Purge

I really like my apartment. It is equal parts industrial and cozy and has a walk in closet, but if we are looking at square footage alone, it is small. I really enjoyed having a small apartment two years ago because I had just moved back from Germany, and didn’t have a whole lot of stuff. I felt free of the trap that is stuff. However, I am very much an American, which means I like stuff. I like owning cute things, beautiful things, interesting things, things, things, and more things. Two years since moving into my cozy apartment with its industrial edge, I started to feel suffocated– overcome with the need for more bedrooms, more space, more stuff. So, I sat down to think about why that might be, considering nothing significant had changed in my life.

While scrolling through my Pinterest page full of decorating tips, furniture ideas, clothes I coveted, I realized I have way more stuff than I had two years ago. Why did I want more? Maybe it is not that I am outgrowing my apartment, but I have crammed too many things I don’t really need into a limited space. So, in an effort to explore this further, I started to pull all of my belongings out of bins and drawers and out of my closet. Some of those things I forgot I owned or haven’t worn since I moved to Oklahoma for this or that reason. It really didn’t matter why I was keeping all these things, the fact was that it was all there taking up room in my home, sitting underneath the stacks of new things I was busy looking at now.

Being surrounded by it all felt like too much to deal with while I was still busy buying Christmas presents, wrapping them, mailing them. I grabbed two fists full of clothes to start shoving everything back into a large blue storage box, and stopped myself. Self, I thought, don’t wait to do this as a spring cleaning project, instead, do a winter purge.

I’m not quite done with this project, but I have boxes full of clothes to donate, and clothes to sell. One highlight includes getting rid of an Anna Sui dress I bought in college more than a decade ago. It is a size two, and I kept telling myself I would fit into it again one day. The truth is, I didn’t look very healthy then, and I started weightlifting five years ago, so it is unlikely I will ever be that small again in a healthy way.

 

Listen, I still like owning things. In fact, I just bought three dresses for work, two for fun, and I have my eye on this fantastic pink chair, but in the middle of this unfinished project I realized that a lot of the panic I’ve had about not owning enough was unfounded. I own too much, or maybe too much of the wrong thing. That realization has made it easy to walk past the 50% off everything sales, which is a welcome feeling.

I say skip your spring cleaning, and instead do a winter purge. What aren’t you using anymore? What is holding space in your life and keeping unhealthy thoughts alive? Get rid of it. After all they are just things, and if you find that you need another pink pencil skirt two years from now, you can just buy another one.