The past few months have been the worst of the worst, agreed?
Here’s all our “what if” fears made manifest. Our fears of ill health, of financial insecurity, of loss of connection and identity, of grief. All very valid, and now compounded.
This is the hellscape we’ve been preparing for, the one we had in mind when we held onto all those items “just in case.”
And guess what?
We’re still not rereading those magazines from 2010.
We’re still not wearing those ill-fitting pants, or displaying our participation trophies, or using that mini cake-pop maker.
We now have over 3 months of these atypical “somedays” as proof: those items never have and never will be of use to us, and our space would be better off without them.
There’s been a lot of chatter lately about how minimalists must be miserable in their empty homes during quarantine. That’s not true. I’m not happy with these circumstances, but I’m not miserable in my house.
First of all, my home is not empty. It’s filled with all of (and only) my favorite things.
And having a tidy and minimalist space makes it pleasant to cook, work, and hang out at home, which is particularly great now that I’m here 99% of the time.
Some folks are writing about how they’re glad they’ve never decluttered because now their accumulation of tee-shirts is vindicated. I call BS.
Now, some folks that donated leisure items like board games and sporting equipment in the past have now repurchased them since they have more free time. Great! When our circumstances change, it makes sense that our possessions do, too. Rather than collect dust in the basement for years until the world turned upside down, some other family actually got to use those items in the meantime.
But an overabundance of tee-shirts we don’t wear is cold comfort. We know what truly helps us feel secure: connections to our loved ones, a sense of community belonging, a financial buffer, a feeling of autonomy in our environment.
Our possessions can’t satisfy all of our needs, particularly now, and we’d be wise to remember that.