Henri Matisse, Still Life with Oranges
I asked Rose, “How can I let go of clutter? I try to reuse, recycle, upcycle, and give away what I don’t need, but still feel bad when I can’t do it for everything…
… even cardboard boxes?!”
Rose responded with a nice little version of the simple process described in her book, Let That Shit Go: Learn to Process Loss and Be Happy.
There’s every reason to feel that life will give you what you need, not always what you want. The path for many of you has been fraught with so many items that you do or don’t need that this has created an entire mountain range of things that need attention.
So you’re bringing to your attention on a mass scale the need to scale down and let go of clutter. This results in an effort to bag it, sell it, loan it, forget it, or neglect it completely and let it pile up in your homes.
How can you allow your best self to be in charge of this situation? By making this a creative project that you’ll find beautiful in the long run. This isn’t always an easy process, but you’ll be astounded at how much you’re going to benefit. Here are our suggestions for getting rid of what you don’t want, physically speaking.
First, realize there’s something within you that you need to let go of. What does this item bring up in you? How can you use the thing if you keep it? If you can’t use it, see this as a way to let go of it.
There may be things that are sincere attempts at bringing love into your world, things like memorabilia. These can pile up, too. So we go back to the original question: What can you use it for? If you can’t use it to bring you joy, let it go. This is a deeper process, but for now, let’s say you have decided you don’t need some memorabilia because you don’t really use it. But perhaps it’s tough to let go of it because you love it and feel respectful of it.
Acknowledge there’s a fear attached and take action. This is part of the grief process. The fear may be that someone may not see you as successful if you don’t have it, or that someone who gave you something is going to be upset, or that you may lose something else in the process, perhaps something valuable.
The shadow will help you identify your fears. If the shadow says “You need to keep this because everybody will think you’re a joke for letting it go,” you can see for yourself that your own self-worth doesn’t need to be attached to the things, and you can let them go.
The fear will move you into ways to act, and some things will be in your control. Perhaps you fear that you will not be happy if it ends up in a garbage dump. You can access alternatives for actions you may take. You might sell the memorabilia, or give it to someone who will love it, or donate it to charity.
If you can’t find a way to move through the fears, or things are beyond your control, ask your essence self to help you. In time, you will find out how to move through this step.
Address what you can do better, or could have done better. This is the hardest part of the letting go process. Is the thing representative of something in you that has been hard to face? If so, there’s reason to tell yourself loudly that you can do better next time. The lesson has been learned. You’re in a position to see the thing into its next phase by suggesting to yourself the thing was there to show you what you needed to learn, then let go of it.
For example, you might believe that having a shiny deck of new age-type inspirational cards is a good thing, but you have a lot of decks that you don’t use. Where can these go? To others, right? So in doing that, what did you learn? That you don’t need so many different places to go for wisdom. You hardly even need one deck, since the spirit guides are in you all the time. So in this, there are many routes to take to get to where you need to be: happy with who you are, and guided by essences who love you.
The more difficult things to address take time to work through. If you have things that remind you of someone you love, there’s still reason to consider letting go of it. This is a broader subject, but the same rules apply. People you love who have been lost are with you always. If an item reminds you of them in beautiful ways, keep it. If not, you need to address the guilt or other feelings around the things, realize how you need to change, and let go of it with a deeper grief process.
The letting go part is the best because you will see the thing into the next phase and be truly free of what you have to let go of in the process. Cartons need reuse or recycling. Bags need to be shared if you’re not using them. Things that are broken should be repaired or recycled into something beautiful.
Even if the thing goes into the recycling bin or garbage dump, it will find another energetic way to express itself. Do you follow? You can more easily let go of clutter when you understand that things don’t ever really die. They may be removed from your view, but they are always going to recycle themselves into the most strange and wonderful things you might imagine. They are energetic imprints of soulful expression, and you don’t need to feel badly. If you haven’t been able to keep something you wanted to, realize it needed to turn into something else. This is where your fear of not doing well enough can be turned into something beautiful: you’ll pray for the thing to find something beautiful to become. In this, you feed the world your own love for it.
The eternal cycle of compassionate creativity is invoked when you go through the process of sorting out what you really need to lose, which in every case is your own fears about being better, faster, richer, more loved, etc. You don’t need anything that causes you to have fear.
So don’t feel badly about seeing something into its next phase. Do your best to find out how it can be reused or recycled, then allow yourself to feel better about sending it on its way. So do so… and let go of clutter in your physical and nonphysical spaces!
