We’ve talked about “stuff” before, in the context of “stuffitis.” (See this post I did last year.) But this week as I’ve been clearing out some stuff in my office, it’s gotten me thinking more about how our stuff is tied to our dreams. No, not the ones we have when we go to sleep… I mean our aspirations, hopes, goals, interests, passions, etc.
A Million Dreams
We dream about all sorts of things: what we’ll do when we grow up, perhaps what we’ll do in our second or third career, what kind of parent, homemaker, volunteer worker, Sunday School teacher, entrepreneur, employee, hobbyist, or friend we’ll be. We may dream of fitness goals, attaining certain skills, living a certain lifestyle, or traveling the world.
Almost all of these dreams/pursuits come with stuff.
And one of the things that sometimes makes it difficult to let go of “stuff,” is that we connect those items in our mind to a specific dream we’ve had.
Not to be melodramatic, but letting go of things becomes a bit like a tangible “letting go” of our dreams.
Most dreams at some point either come to fruition, or they come to an end.
Either way, what happens after is usually a gradual fading away of that particular dream’s importance in our lives. At some point, however, we have to deal with the ephemera left over from the dreams which are no longer.
Don’t Dream It’s Over
As our dreams–fulfilled or not–fade away, new ones replace them. So lest you see this post ending up at the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” 😭 just remember that life is constantly changing. It’s only natural for us to abandon certain pursuits in favor of others.
I do believe it’s important to stick with something if you want to be good at it. But hopefully we’re all growing older and wiser. And hopefully more and more attuned to our life’s calling(s). Accordingly, we have to be constantly editing the supporting materials for our life’s pursuits. Things that were once important can become less so or not at all. And in the end, things are just things. They help us achieve our goals. Hopefully they are never the goals in and of themselves.
Sweet Dreams are Made of This
The thing that got me thinking in this vein this week was, remarkably, cookbooks and recipes that were housed in my home office. (*Spoiler alert* There may be a home office redo coming to a blog near you!)
I had done a couple of cursory purges over the years, because, well… the internet. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if I need to look up a recipe, I’m doing an internet search, or checking my saved Pinterest recipes.
Even so, the cookbooks (many are sentimental keepsakes) and recipes on loose pieces of paper were taking up a significant amount of real estate in our home, to be something somewhat rarely used.
I got to thinking about why in the world I had saved an actual TON of jotted-down, or photocopied, or clipped-from-magazine pages and food packaging RECIPES. Plus almost every cookbook I’ve ever owned!
And I don’t even really LIKE to cook!
A Head Full of Dreams
I think at some point I dreamed of being an amazing cook. The kind that the whole family would brag on. The kind that everyone requested “that special dish” from at various holidays and gatherings throughout the year. One who always put together something exciting and yummy for the family, and who had an endless repertoire of dishes at the ready.
Printed recipes in magazines were little nuggets of information that might turn into some amazing taste experience we could all enjoy for years to come. How could I not cut them out, really?
(I directly followed generations of women on both sides of my family who ALL were fantastic cooks. However, I spent my adolescence studying chemistry and classical piano and was basically useless in the kitchen. Insecurity may have played a role in all of this…)
I wanted to find the ultimate “best” recipe for all of the standard dishes. You know–the way Martha Stewart would take all the iconic dishes we had ever seen and show the one, true, correct way to do them and then pronounce it a “good” thing. I’m not gonna lie. I gave the woman some serious credence.
So for many years I endlessly clipped recipes from magazines, on a never-ending quest to be the perfect domestic chef. I visited websites for different cooking shows and downloaded their offerings. I quizzed friends, relatives, and coworkers, and collected their best recipes. And I held on to all of my various and sundry cookbooks and all the cooking aspirations they represented.
But somewhere along the way, when I began to reach middle age and have some food issues, and later discovered food allergies, the term RESTRICTIVE DIET became a part of our vocabulary. Soon thereafter, my daughters, by way of elimination diets, also discovered some similar food intolerances. And I had to adopt a whole new host of recipes around the same time Pinterest came onto the scene.
Only in My Dreams
Fast forward back to this week. I could no longer avoid facing this heaped-up collection of recipes that I accumulated in my quest to be the best home-kitchen-culinary-expert ever. I decided I have to let go of my dream of dazzling my friends and family with decadent, deliciously sinful entrees and desserts. And reconcile with the fact that I’m always going to be the aunt who brings the boring, healthy dish to the gathering. If for no other reason than that her family will have something they can eat.
The dashing of my dreams intersected with the practical need to clear the un-needed, unused items out of the space, so that I could streamline it and make it more effective for my life NOW.
So, I began to unearth my WHOLE collection of squirreled-away recipes and cookbooks.
And it dawned on me that I have WAY. too. many. The truth is I could probably get rid of almost ALL of them, and in the end I probably will. But for now, I had to start to reduce them at least.
Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car
I think I’ve mentioned before that I applied Marie Kondo’s tidying up methods to my clothing. And it was a total game changer. It gave me perspective on the excess of clothing I had when I actually saw it all in front of me and took a count. I had something like 150 tops.
The logical, mathematical part of me kicked in. I realized that since I’d like to wear any tops I really love considerably more than 2-3 times a year (365 days divided by 150 equals 2.43), that I had a great many that I could safely let go of. And when I held each top in my hands and evaluated if I loved it or not, it was an easy decision to choose to keep the ones I really loved, in order to facilitate wearing what I love the great majority of the time, and eliminating things I didn’t love from the pool of choices.
What does that have to do with recipes? Well, there are still only 365 days in a year. And we eat out at least 2-3 times a week. And breakfast and lunches are pretty much no-brainers and I don’t usually break out recipes for them. That leaves me with around 260 opportunities to cook meals in a year. (And let’s be real, I’m not going to cook all those from a recipe…) Once again, if the meal is good, I definitely want to repeat it at least once a month. With that few opportunities to actually use a new recipe, in truth, I can whittle my collection down probably by 80% or more, and still have enough choices to avoid FOMO of the ones I let go. haha!
Dream On
So yesterday, I began something similar to what I did with the clothing. Now, because of the sheer volume, I wasn’t able to immediately just look at one TYPE of recipe. Instead, I began just to look at recipes one by one—same with the cookbooks—and try to be realistic about whether I should even consider keeping them.
The food allergies we have automatically eliminated a whole host of recipes from the stack. (And I was able to get rid of about three fourths of the cookbooks without too much consternation.)
Later, after I’ve pared the loose-leaf recipes down to something close to reasonable, I can categorize them and possibly make some decisions based on how many of each type of recipe I really need/want.
I will need to separate the ones that might be okay from the ones that I would LOVE. I don’t need to continue to wear clothes I don’t love, because I have plenty that I DO. In the same way, I have plenty of great recipes without ever having to settle for a so-so one.
I also need to migrate some of my old stand-by recipes from their current paper format into my Trello meal planning board (see it here), since some have fallen by the wayside purely because of the convenience of looking things up on the computer. I probably only need to keep hard copies of my most treasured hand-me-down recipes, if that.
Sweet Dreams Baby
Sooooo… If you have a stash of stuff (yours might be sports gear, art supplies, or various and sundry collectibles) somewhere in your home that might be emotionally connected to some of your hopes and dreams AND you’re the type (as I am) that thinks about things like that, here are some ground rules to help you navigate through them and not get STUCK when cleaning out/tidying/decluttering/purging.
Consider the amount of space you have –
If the stuff in question is in the place that makes the most sense for it in your home, try to live within the boundaries of the storage that’s there. Only keep what fits into the space comfortably.
Live in the NOW –
Make decisions based on who you are/what you do today. Your things are NOT your memories. You’ll still have the memories and the corresponding past identity even when the stuff is gone. Don’t let a past season take over the space that should be reserved for your current one.
Be realistic about the future –
Not to be morbid, but none of us are permanent residents here, and we can’t take it with us when we go. Get real about what you want to carry forward into the time you have left. Also just consider what you realistically can use within a particular span of time.
Location, location, location (consider relocating the items) –
Are the items near where they would logically be used? If not, they should be. UNLESS they are something very infrequently used. Then just make sure they are not taking up valuable real estate where something else used more often should reside.
Break the items into categories if possible –
Our brains are better able to make sense of what to keep and get rid of when we see things logically categorized and grouped together. Nobody needs ten recipes for potato salad.
Enjoy what you keep/think of creative ways to honor the past –
Examples of this are t-shirt quilts or printing a family recipe on a plate or cutting board. It can also be as simple as framing or displaying a treasured keepsake in a shadowbox–or just putting your treasured photographs in an album that can be viewed regularly. IF you are keeping something for sentimental reasons, be intentional about enjoying it.
Revisit as needed –
Sometimes it takes several phases of letting go to get to where you want to be. Some of us can rip off the band-aid in one go. But some of us need to let go in increments. And then we all have certain categories of “stuff” that are more sticky and hard for us to deal with than others. Also, know that circumstances in your life are ever changing, and we need to revisit the stuff we hang onto with frequency in order not to stagnate and to keep our storage spaces working for and not against us.
Hope this post helps in some small way to make your decluttering DREAMS come true!
Feel free to post your favorite “dream” song title in the comments. 😉
Blessings,
