In anticipation of selling my house, I’ve spent months cleaning out my basement.

To be honest, I’ve spent months thinking about cleaning out the basement, deftly switching to a less daunting task each time I nearly approached the basement chore. But now I’ve finally begun working (sporadically) at clearing through more than twenty years’ worth of clutter, and I’m making some progress.

I say the clutter is a 20-year accumulation, but it’s actually more than that. I have boxes in my basement that I’ve lugged through my entire adult life, but haven’t opened in decades. Boxes of childhood treasures. Boxes of materials for a career that ended 22 years ago. File cabinets full of old bills, dutifully paid off and tucked into drawers ages ago. Household treasures that we boxed up and stored when we lived overseas in 2011.

Then there is the inherited clutter—containers full of other people’s stuff. Boxes of my now-grown children’s toys. Boxes of dishes that belonged to beloved relatives, now deceased. File cabinets full of my ex-husband’s father’s papers. And the peculiar collections of items that fell prey to the “Box Method.”

My ex-husband’s method of tidying up the house was to gather up everything he deemed as “clutter” and put it into a box. He’d haul the box to the basement and stash it somewhere, and that was that. Later, one of the girls would ask, “Where are my shoes?” and we’d have to go search for the right box and dig out the shoes. Or, being unable to find them, we’d have to buy new shoes.

With all this amassed stuff, the basement had become an embarrassment. When repairmen needed to enter the basement, I’d cringe and admit, “It’s scary down there.” They’d always tell me that they had seen worse, but I knew the awful truth: it was a disordered mess. And even though I could shut the basement door and forget about it for a while, soon I’d have to descend to do a load of laundry, and there it was. A big “Ugh.” All that chaos constantly churned down there; sometimes it was as if I could feel it seeping up through the floorboards of the kitchen and living room, threatening to spread disorder throughout the rest of the house.

But the job seemed so overwhelming that I just couldn’t face it. I didn’t even know where to start.

With the help and moral support of friends, I began near the entrance to the basement. First, we had to disassemble train tables that my ex had built throughout the basement. When he designed the layout years ago, it was going to be an amazing model train set-up, but he’d stopped working on it years ago; now the tables, like every other horizontal surface in the basement, had been infected by metastatic clutter. So we started with shoving the clutter from the tables into a corner and taking the tables apart, then hauling off all the pieces of wood.  

Then came the boxes. Opening one box at a time, I began with a triage question: is it my responsibility or someone else’s? When the answer was someone else’s, I set it aside for them to handle. When it was mine, I sorted it: move it to the new house, donate it, sell it in an estate sale, or trash/recycle it. And so, other than those things that I specifically want to move to my new house, I’m letting things go.

It’s quite a process.

At first, letting go was scary. After all, who am I without all my stuff? If the stuff represents memories, am I letting go of the memories if I dispose of the things? So who am I if I lose those memories? And what about the people attached to those memories and things? Am I dishonoring them by getting rid of things they treasured? 

As I hold each item in my hands, I’m doing my own version of Marie Kondo. For me, it isn’t just about whether the item brings me joy. I have to evaluate why I’m attached to it. Some objects seem to have value because I’ve hauled them with me throughout my life. I’ll look at some trinket and think, “I remember having this in my room when I was a child. I liked it then. Who gave it to me? I don’t remember. But it must have been someone special. This thing must have been special. Surely I wouldn’t have kept it if weren’t. But is it special now? Do I need this any more? Does it serve me any longer? Am I the person I was when this was so meaningful?”

More often than not, the answer is no. I don’t need it any longer. It’s time to let it go.

Then I begin to wonder how much energy I’ve spent carrying all that with me throughout my life. What would I have had room for if I hadn’t been storing so many mementos of the past? What exciting new things am I now making space for?

During this pandemic, it would be easy for me to cling to my stuff, to feel as if grasping gives me some security. It’s natural to want to hang on to the familiar, even when the familiar has become a burden. Like Hamlet, we “bear those ills we have (rather) than fly to others that we know not of.” But holding on to them now feels like trying to stay afloat by grasping an anchor.

Thich Nhat Hanh said, “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.”

I’ve experienced the freedom I feel when I let go of belongings. When Grasping hurls its final arrow at me—“But this was given by your aunt/grandmother/dear friend, and you loved your aunt/grandmother/dear friend”—I take a deep breath and remind myself that my aunt, grandmother, and friend would not want me to make a shrine of whatever object I hold in my hands. They wouldn’t have wanted me to be encumbered by it. They would, in all likelihood, have celebrated my freedom in letting it go. They would want me to be happy.

And so, Dear Reader, in this time of “social distancing,” may you take time to discern what is meaningful to you, and what is a burden. May you let go of that which no longer serves. May you find your freedom. And may you be well and happy.   

Until next time,