Letting Go Experiment: Month 4

It has now been 4 months and 9 days since I began my year-long letting-go experiment. I am still managing to find one thing per day to release from my life. I am now one-third of the way through this experiment, and I am still nowhere near being clutter-free, though this is my goal.

This past month, the focus of my letting-go project was on clothing. In an earlier Blog (Letting Go - Clearing the Clothes Closet), I described my criteria and strategies for approaching this task. This past month, half the items on my daily log were items of clothing. Other items included foods, suppplements, a few books, a couple of summer outdoor decorations, and some miscellaneous household items.

Letting go of the 15 clothing items was an interesting process. A few pairs of pants did not fit well, and I chose to have them altered rather than give them away. Some items easily fit my criteria and were easy to release. However, a few were not so easy to part with. For example, two top quality professional suits were ultimately donated to a women's Dress for Success clothing drive, after some resistance and a bit of internal dialogue. Normally, I would have held on to these suits for a long time because they were expensive to purchase and I felt that I "should" wear them. However, with each of these items, something was preventing me from wearing them - size, color, fit, or how I felt in them. When I realized that someone else could really use these suits that were languishing in my closet, it became much easier to part with them.

This month, I also learned two more things:

(1) Making a purchasing mistake is not a reason to hang on to an item that is cluttering up your space. Either return it, sell it, or give it away.

(2) "Should" is not a reason to hang on to anything, whether it be a material item or a habit or behavior.

I am already about one-third of the way into Month 5. So far, the theme seems to be foods and eating habits. Tune in at the end of Month 5 (mid-November) to read more about it.

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Email: connie@conniekomack.com
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