DECLUTTERING DREAMS (SMALL ONES AND BIG ONES)
At one point I decluttered sixty-seven pounds of rusty metal. Getting rid of that metal was getting rid of my dream of being a welder.
My father-in-law was a welder. Even though he was retired when my husband and I married, he had a workshop at his house full of welding tools, welding supplies, and the helmet thingies welders wear.
Yes, I totally called it a helmet thingy. Because knowing there are supplies required and some sort of special helmet that keeps you from burning your eyes completely out of your head is as far as I got on my personal welding journey.
At some point, early in my marriage, the easy access to welding equipment and an expert welding instructor was too much for my idea-loving brain to handle. How in the world could I possibly justify not learning to weld?
So I took the first (totally irrational in retrospect, but totally logical to me at the time) step: I headed to the junkyard.
Did you know that if you buy a bunch of scrap metal, you’re supposed to have them weigh your vehicle first, and then load up the scrap metal, and then have them weigh your vehicle again so they can charge you by the difference between the two weights?
I didn’t. So I did it wrong, and the junkyard guy (after a somewhat dramatic heavy-sigh) basically glanced at my pile of scrap metal and told me to give him three dollars.
Heading to the junkyard and collecting rebar, sheet metal, and such was as far as this hobby ever went. But still, I moved that load of random scrap metal four hours away when we moved, where it sat in our backyard and rusted.
Finally, I threw it away. I didn’t even take it to a scrap yard to get my three dollars back.
I dream of doing cool things, of learning new skills, of being resourceful and crafty and interesting. And when opportunity collides with an idea, I can barely resist.
Once upon a time, I didn’t even consider resisting. I wanted to bring sixty-seven pounds of metal into my home, because I never considered I might not one day be a welder.
This chapter is about decluttering dreams, but I’m dividing this subject into two parts: small dreams and big dreams.
Small dreams are things I wanted to do or be, but aren’t life-altering if I don’t get to do them or be them. Big dreams are life-altering.
SMALL DREAMS
Craft projects (or welding projects) you never finished are examples of small dreams. Small dreams can be hobbies that sounded great but didn’t consume you the way you thought they would. They can be organizing solutions you were sure would work the way they did in the pictures, but totally did not.
While the two decluttering questions will take you through everything in your house, decluttering your dreams is nuanced.
Is This Actually a Dream?
Or is it a cool thing you thought you might like doing?
As a former garage sale addict/aficionado, I was always running across cool stuff. “Dreams” were often the result of an amazing price and me asking myself, How could I say no?
Those weren’t dreams; they were opportunities.
I once bought two shopping bags full of stamps. Rubber stamps, wood stamps, and foam stamps. Someone spent money and time carefully collecting those stamps and then sold the entire collection to me for one dollar.
But I didn’t stamp. I occasionally let my kids stamp gift bags for grandparents, but for those two or three incidents over two or three years, I stored sixty stamps in my cabinet. When I thought about letting them go, I felt like I was giving up on my dream (even though it was just a cool thing) of being the person who stamps.
Did You Inherit This Dream?
Is this your dream or someone else’s?
Maybe Aunt Glenda was a quilter, and you inherited not only her beautiful creations but her supplies and fabric stash and quilt squares and a full-sized quilt stand.
An older neighbor once gave me a large box of glass bottles and etching supplies. She gave them to me because she knew I was creative. I accepted them gladly, but then they sat in my garage for years. I finally had to admit that etching glass is cool, but it isn’t my dream.
Was Collecting the Stuff the Best Part of the Dream?
I dreamed of being (and assumed I would be) a baker. I watched baking shows and copied baking recipes. I gathered supplies and collected pans. But as real-life set in, I realized I wasn’t capable of baking regularly. Mostly, I wasn’t capable of eating baked goods regularly. And I didn’t love baking quite as much as I’d assumed I would. But I struggled to declutter because of all the memories I had of collecting that stuff.
As Always, the Container Decides
Is this particular dream container worthy? Does this dream-related stuff deserve shelf space more than other, reality-related things in your home?
When I looked at my stuff that way, I was able to easily part with those bags of stamps. When I finally tackled the clutter in my kitchen, I had to admit I didn’t have room for the baking stuff and the kitchen supplies I actually used.
Dreams that were only cool ideas were obvious when I understood limits—not limits to my dreams, but limits to the space available in my home.
Does this dream-related stuff deserve shelf space more than other, reality-related things in your home?
But remember, start with easy stuff. Don’t begin your decluttering journey by tackling dreams. Get rid of easy stuff. Purge things you don’t like. Let your perspective change, learn how to declutter, and experience the impact decluttering has on your home so you can apply what you’ve learned to this difficult stuff.
Tips for Tackling Small-Dream Clutter
“Less” is a strangely effective decluttering mind-set change. Do you need all of the things you’ve collected for this dream, or could you survive with less? Having a few stamps was fun, but having two grocery sacks full of stamps was making life more difficult.
Even if you’re not ready to purge everything related to this dream, look. I have to look. I can’t assume I know what is inside a bag or a cabinet or how I’ll feel about individual things in it. I’m always surprised to find things I don’t even like or that are obviously trash, and when I get rid of the trash that was mixed in with my Dream Clutter, I sometimes find there’s room in my container to keep it.
Do an identity reality check. So many of my small dreams were an identity issue. I had dreamed of being a certain person, and I collected things I thought that person would like to have. I was going to be the mom who threw herself into her family, who made home-cooked meals a reality. I intended to become a community leader who made people feel loved and special by doing things like making homemade cards. Homemade stamped cards.
My Dream Clutter represented how I thought my dreams would look once they were reality. I thought I was equipping Future Me at a bargain price, and I assumed gathering these things was wise.
Decluttering the things that represented the person I’d assumed I’d be was heart-aching because it made me question whether I was living up to the identity I had envisioned.
But I did achieve those identities. I cooked for my family. I invested in my community and focused on relationships, and I threw myself wholeheartedly into motherhood. The details of those identities just looked so different from how I’d assumed they’d look.
Being the mom who cooked for her family did not mean being the mom who spent hours in the kitchen, creating gourmet meals and milling her own flour. It meant shopping sales and pre-cooking meats in bulk so I could get a homemade meal on the table with minimal fuss and limited time.
Investing in my community didn’t mean fancy dinner parties and homemade, handstamped greeting cards. It did mean taking an easyto-freeze meal to a new mama or a friend who was starting chemo. It meant choreographing musicals for ten-year-old kids who needed to know there was more to life than baseball.
Throwing myself into my family meant wriggling into my bathing suit every single day of the Texas summer, and figuring out how to best use a Crock-Pot instead of a springform pan.
I’m all about living with intention, but living out that intention doesn’t mean the details look exactly like I thought they might.
I didn’t have an exact plan, but I collected things as they conveniently crossed my path, assuming Future Me would know exactly what to do with these things.
She was going to have it all together, of course.
I’m committed to living for now—for the situation and life stage I am in.
Break your paralysis by using your stuff. Stamp something. There’s a chance you’ll realize stamping is exactly what’s been missing in your life for the past who-knows-how-long. But most likely, you’ll see you only actually like three or four of the fifty stamps in your cabinet. You’ll realize six out of seven ink pads are completely dry, and you don’t like this hobby enough to pay full price for more ink.
And then decluttering will be easy. Yay for easy.
BIG DREAMS
Laughing about welding dreams is one thing, but what about dreams that aren’t laughable?
What about dreams that cause tears to fall in the midst of random conversations?
Dreams of how you thought life would go or who you desperately wanted to be.
I got this question from a podcast listener:
I’ve been decluttering like crazy lately and donating a ton of my son’s clothes, baby toys, etc., that I’ve been saving in hopes of having a second child. I’m now forty-seven, my son is eight, and I’m finally accepting the reality that my dream is never going to happen. I’m pushing through with decluttering this stuff and also saving those truly special items, but it’s been really emotional for me and I’m grieving. I guess the question is how to get through decluttering when it means you’re facing reality and giving up on a dream (it would also be relevant to someone decluttering craft projects, workwear for a career that didn’t work out, exercise equipment, items from a failed marriage, whatever).
I love that she acknowledges there are similarities between small dreams and the huge life dreams she’s letting go.
They boil down to this: I thought one day I would________________, but now I’ve realized I never will.
Big and small dreams are completely different, though, in regard to who is in control. I could have welded. I had everything I needed to weld. I just didn’t. The pain I feel about giving up on welding is regret.
The pain she feels as she realizes she will not have more children is grief. Grief and regret are different things.
Big dreams that require decluttering usually also require grief.
Require it. Grief is a thing. It happens whether you’re planning for it or not. Some people manage to go their entire lives without bringing home a minivan full of things they don’t actually need, but no one avoids the pain of life not going exactly as he or she planned.
But sometimes you don’t realize that what you’re going through is grief.
When I was a newlywed, a friend shared a great perspective. There’s a form of grief that’s common in new marriages. As you work to build the so-called perfect relationship, putting time and energy and focus on what it means to do marriage right, you start seeing the flaws in your own childhood and family. While the way your family functioned was normal to you because it was all you knew, working on your own marriage means identifying things you want to do differently.
Strangely, there’s grief in that. Grief over having grown up in an environment that wasn’t as ideal as you’d always assumed it was. Grief over having that veil lifted, over changed memories.
This isn’t a chapter about marriage, but that conversation opened up a new way of thinking for me. I realized grief is more than intense sadness and can be present at times when you don’t even realize you’re grieving. Grieving is the process of emotionally navigating a loss. Navigating the loss of a dream is where grief can come as a surprise.
It’s possible to grieve something you never had. This is what so many people grieving the loss of a loved one are experiencing. The loss of a loved one’s presence is devastating, but grief returns in waves as time brings reminders of things that should have happened for that one who is gone. A parent who loses a child also loses the opportunity to visit colleges with that child. A wife who loses her husband loses the partner who was supposed to be there to help make daunting decisions.
And that’s what is important to understand about grief: There are stages, and walking through those stages isn’t only important, it’s necessary. And unfortunately, unavoidable.
Prince Harry of England was interviewed in 2017 on Bryony Gordon’s Mad World podcast. He shared that at the age of twenty-eight he finally faced his grief over his mother’s death, sixteen years after she’d been gone. For years he thought he could avoid grief, but he couldn’t. He had to walk through it.
There isn’t any way to get around grief. There’s only walking through, and even then it’s not about coming out on the other side unscathed. It’s about coming out a changed person.
The stages of grief are real. Knowing what the phases are doesn’t prevent hurt, and getting through them doesn’t mean you forget. But understanding that the phases are legitimate and identifying your own stage in the process can help you feel a little less crazy.
A lot of my own clutter is directly linked to denial. I have to fight against living in denial. If something is unpleasant or stressful, I’ll purposely deny it. Ignore it. If I think an e-mail is going to say something I don’t want to hear, I put off opening it.
But with grief, denial is a phase.
It’s a legitimate stop on the Grief Walk Trail, and there’s no alternate path to walk around it.
I have had closets full of denial—denial that my teaching career was over. That the games and ideas and quizzes I worked so hard to create are truly of no use to me now.
I’ve tripped over boxes full of denial—denial that I really might never get my master’s degree. That my life had really taken a completely different direction.
So what’s the easiest way to get through denial? (Not around, not over, but through?)
Noncommittal Decluttering
Touch things. I’ve said it again and again. Look. Always, always look. Assuming what is in a box or at the back of a shelf does no good whatsoever.
But assuming is the hardest thing for me to fight in my war against clutter. I see a mass of stuff and assume it’s full of emotions. I assume every last item in the pile, box, or closet will rip my heart right out of my chest.
Every single item will represent a part of life I’m not ready to accept is over.
If you’re fighting denial, give yourself permission to go through your things and not even declutter. Today is the day for letting yourself feel. For touching things, even if not one item goes into the trash bag or the Donate Box.
There’s a chance you’ll be surprised that the box or cabinet contains things with no emotional value alongside things that are packed with emotions. If you’ve followed my advice and have already decluttered nonemotional stuff, you will likely be surprised at the effects of the decluttering experience you’ve gained.
But tricking yourself into decluttering is not the point. The point is to just touch the things. Feel the feelings. Remember these things you’re keeping out of fear you’ll forget.
Don’t wear mascara. Go for it with zero expectations.
And then, let yourself live awhile.
If I make myself look at or read through something I don’t want to look at or read through, my brain does strange things after I’m done. When I go back again to that space, whether it’s been a year or a month, I generally have a shifted perspective on the stuff that was so difficult last time.
I am not a grief counselor, and I don’t pretend to understand the intensity of your loss. But if there is a physical representation of that grief, physically holding those items is a way to purposefully walk through the pain. I know from general clutter experience that avoiding doesn’t work.
There’s No Perfect Way
Do what you want to do. If you feel the need to (legally) burn boxes without looking inside, go for it (after you check local burn laws). There’s no right way to declutter.
Or keep what you are desperate to keep. But acknowledge that the Container Concept is fact. If you truly can’t part with these dreams, what are you willing to part with so you can keep them?
Maybe the box full of outgrown Halloween costumes is easy to let go once you realize you need that shelf space for the business suits you can’t bear to donate. Maybe maternity clothes can go in the spot where you’ve kept that box of hand-me-downs you hated so your kid never wore.
Or maybe viewing the closet shelf as a container helps you realize you’re not willing to let your fear of letting go of tailored jackets keep you from being the mom who can outfit every neighborhood kid as a superhero at the same time. Maybe you’re ready to embrace that mom identity and let go of your professional identity.
Decluttering is about identifying the stuff you really want to keep, in a way that you can handle.
Is this stuff making the life you have harder to live? Are you giving priority to things that never happened over the things that are happening now?
There’s more to your grief than your clutter. Seeing a therapist is what people determined to be emotionally healthy do. Find one in your area, or join a grief support group.
Tips for Tackling Big-Dream Clutter
Now that we’ve spent some time on the touchy-feely side of big, heart-ripping dreams, let’s deal with the practical side. I’m going to use the office wardrobe as an example. Please know I am aware your unique dream-clutter issue may be completely different and much more significant than an office wardrobe. But if an office wardrobe is your unique issue, also know that I understand how much that wardrobe once represented your identity and how difficult giving up that identity, either voluntarily or by force, can be.
Is it truly sentimental, or is it a what-if scenario? The money and time spent to collect an expensive office wardrobe can be a legitimate reason to want to hold on to it. But how legitimate is that fear in reality? Are these classic pieces, or are they part of a trend that will be over before you might need them again?
Can you reduce? Keep one or some? If you’ve purged easy stuff like the tops with underarm discoloration (from the high-stress meetings you used to have), stains, or tears, is it still possible to reduce some more? Can you reduce the stock to one or two pairs of black pants instead of the ten you once justified having? Can you keep the three power suits you wore more than anything else?
Consolidate. As you’ve identified Dream Clutter you truly can’t purge, consolidate. Put all of your office wear together instead of letting it mix with other clothes in your closet.
Physically putting things together is key for my own reality check in my home. I grasp the actual volume of an item I have. So many times, seeing all of it together wakes me up to how much of my home a certain dream is taking up, and that frees me to see it for what it is: clutter.
If office suits were mixed in with yoga pants and college sweatshirts, I would have no idea how much space is being given to office suits.
Physically touching things makes me acknowledge them. Do I, no longer a theatre teacher, need to keep my costume stash? Maybe not. But I did. When I put the costumes all together, I touched each item before I put it in the container. This helped me get rid of a lot of things I couldn’t justify putting in the designated space I had. It also freed other spaces in my home for other things. And if I do need costumes, I can find them more easily. They’re together, in a spot for costumes.
DON’T START HERE
Dreams are difficult to declutter. Don’t start with dreams. Get rid of easy stuff first. Decluttering momentum is real, and the worst place to start is with the stuff that makes your heart hurt. Don’t start with the stuff that makes you feel like you’re donating a piece of your soul.
Throw away trash. Get rid of stuff you hate. Clear visible spaces of stuff that has an established, nonemotional place elsewhere in the home. Focus on neutral stuff.
One of two things will happen: You’ll end up with space to give these dreams a home and yourself room to live well. Or your perspective will change as you begin valuing space over stuff—and living now instead of in the past or the future—and this Dream Clutter will look very different to you by the time you tackle it. Either way, your house will be better off.
The hardest part of giving yourself permission to walk through the stages of grief is knowing that you will come through the stages different than you are now. Change will happen. You will change. And change is scary.
But changing doesn’t mean forgetting, ignoring, or even giving up. You are ready for change because you’re ready for your house to change. That’s why you are reading this book.