Clearing out

Everyone has a Monica cupboard don’t they?

Not the actual cupboard. Image kindly supplied by Phil on Unsplash.

The first weeks of January have been cold. The ground white with frost most days, makes staying in preferable to going out. The weekends are full of those jobs we have been putting off in a bid to start the new year with order. Nothing we no longer need and ease of being with the things that we do. And in this process, I have found the need to do this in other areas of life as well.

We have this cupboard, and I’m sure you have one too, or at least a drawer. The place where anything and everything lives with no order. The place where things go to be dealt with later. We call ours the Monica cupboard. If you’re familiar with friends, you’ll remember The One With the Secret Closet season 8 episode 14. Where Chandler pries open the one cupboard in the apartment Monica has forbidden him to open. Inside the cupboard, in contrast to the perfectly pristine apartment; is total and utter chaos.

Old lamps, globes, baskets piled in. A part of her that she kept hidden. The part she didn’t want anyone else to see. The part that went against the image she had projected of herself.

That was our cupboard. A random collection of things in no particular order. Often they were placed in trepidation as to whether or not they would stay fixed or burst out on the next unsuspecting person to open it. And if you go there looking for something in particular forget it, you’re better off just buying it again.

It’s not uncommon to commit to such a task in January. It’s cold, Christmas has taken its toll on the finances and there’s a need, even in a small way to exert some control on the new year. A small task that can be completed, ticked off. The world is slightly slower. Plans are yet to be made and time to sort through the debris of life easier to carve out.

But as I was sorting through the box marked memories, which randomly contained things that were not memorable,  like unopened recordable DVD’s. Which, could be considered a memory of a not-so-distant time when streaming was not yet invented. And it made me think of all the things we keep in our minds that are out of date, no longer of use and cluttering our ability to think.

Winter is a time to sort through those too. What have we been holding onto that is no longer useful, no longer has a purpose and no longer serves us? Clearing a physical space that we can see day in and day out but leaving our minds bursting. When I suffered burnout the best way I could describe the moment it happened was like a suitcase had burst open and everything came tumbling out. Like I had been forcing more things in it without taking anything out. Sitting on it using all my weight to enable the two sides to meet and the zip to be done up. That was until there was too much to contain.

I had been holding on to too much without clearing out. Until I needed to unpack piece-by-piece, all the things, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. The stress, the anxiety, the worry, it was all there; every time I kept going when I should have stopped.

And so, over the past year and a half, I paused. I’ve been unpacking, editing, sorting and organising all the things I want to keep and looking through and discarding the rest. Until there is order and room for new things, good things, and there was, there is. That’s how I found room for writing, reading and thinking about the future.