The Emotional Release of Letting Things Go

It started with dishes.

Not particularly beautiful dishes. Not heirlooms. Just plates I had bought because, at some point, we needed plates.

I was standing in my kitchen going through cabinets, deciding what could stay and what could go, when I found myself thinking about how easily ordinary objects become something more simply because we’ve had them for a long time.

I’ve been clearing things out of our home lately, drawers, cabinets, decorations, and all those little things that somehow find a place to sit for years. At first, I thought I was cleaning. Then I realized I was letting go.

There is a strange emotional weight that can settle into the things we own. Sometimes an object belonged to someone we loved. Sometimes we paid good money for it. Sometimes we’ve carried it through three houses and twenty years and can’t even remember why. And sometimes we don’t particularly like the thing at all. Still, letting it go can feel uncomfortable.

As I sorted through the kitchen, I thought about things that belonged to my grandparents and other people I’ve loved. Those are harder. When someone is no longer here, an ordinary object can begin to feel like a piece of that person. A plate isn’t only a plate anymore. A chair isn’t only a chair. Somewhere along the way, the object and the memory become tangled together, and getting rid of one can feel dangerously close to getting rid of the other.

But they’re not the same thing. Love isn’t inside the plate. The memory doesn’t disappear because the object leaves the house.

That thought eventually led me somewhere I hadn’t expected: to my own children and grandchildren, and even to the great-grandchildren who may come someday. I imagined one of them, years from now, standing in a kitchen somewhere trying to decide what to do with my old dishes. And I wanted to tell them: For heaven’s sake, get rid of the plates.

They weren’t special. I bought them because we needed something to eat dinner on. I don’t even particularly like some of them anymore. The thought of somebody dragging those dishes from house to house because they belonged to Grandma Becky made the whole thing suddenly seem ridiculous. They’re just plates. And strangely enough, realizing that helped me look differently at the things I had inherited too.

Some things truly are special. I have objects whose stories matter deeply to me, and I want to keep them. But not everything from the past has to follow us into every season of our lives.

When a House Gets Quieter

The more I cleared, the more I noticed something happening beyond the cabinets. The house felt different. There were fewer things asking to be moved, organized, stored, or dealt with. I could open a cabinet without rearranging six things to reach the seventh. I could look across a room without immediately noticing something I’d been meaning to do something about. I hadn’t realized how many unfinished decisions I was living with.

Do I keep this?

Where should this go?

What if I need it someday?

Will someone be upset if I let it go?

One unanswered question doesn’t weigh very much.

Hundreds of them do.

As those questions disappeared, the rooms became quieter.

And so did I.

A Different Season of Home

Jeff and I are empty nesters now. For years, home was necessarily about more than the two of us. When you’re raising children, a house has to hold everybody—their belongings, their needs, their stages, their lives. This is the first time I’ve really stopped and asked myself: What do I want our home to feel like now? Not what should go on that wall. Not what decoration belongs on that shelf. What do I want it to feel like?

I’ve started taking down store-bought decorations that don’t mean anything to me anymore. I’m simplifying. I’m putting my own artwork on the walls. And perhaps most surprisingly, I’m allowing some places to remain empty. I’m discovering that an empty space doesn’t necessarily need to be fixed.

It can simply be space.

Room for the eye to rest.

Room for a home to breathe.

Room to wait until something genuinely belongs there.

And maybe that’s what I’ve really been doing all along.

I thought I was clearing cabinets.

Instead, I’ve been deciding what deserves to come with me.

There are things I will keep because they’re useful. Things I’ll keep because they’re beautiful. Things I’ll keep because their stories matter enough that holding the object still matters to me.

And there are things I can thank for whatever purpose they once served and allow to leave.

The past doesn’t disappear when we stop storing all of its belongings.

The people we’ve loved don’t disappear.

Neither do the lives we’ve lived.

Sometimes letting go isn’t about becoming someone new at all.

It’s simply making room for more of who we already are.