The newest installment (v18) of the “What’s Interesting?” feature is here with my latest discoveries that inform, educate, and relate to organizing and life balance. I’ve included unique and inspiring letting go-related finds, which reflect this month’s blog theme. You are such an incredibly engaged group and I am so grateful for you. I look forward to your participation and additions to the collection I’ve sourced. What do you find interesting?

What’s Interesting? . . .

1. Interesting Read – Letting Go Habits

We live packed, fast-paced lives with full schedules, lots of possessions and many distractions. In The Power of Less – The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential . . . in Business and in Life, Leo Babauta, writer and blogger at Zen Habits, encourages readers to simplify all aspects of your life.  Babauta says, “Simplicity boils down to two steps: 1. Identify the essential. 2. Eliminate the rest.” He shares principles such as setting limits, changing habits and adjusting focus for letting go of our needing more mindset. Practical strategies for applying these principles to goal setting, time management, decluttering and other areas are also discussed. There are some gems throughout, but I especially appreciate the overall focus on moving towards less. Babauta says, “Focus on the essential and allow everything else to drop away. It’ll make you much happier, less stressed, and perhaps surprisingly, more productive.”

2. Interesting Research  –Letting Go Psychology

Some of the reasons why letting go becomes challenging is that we get attached to or have an exaggerated sense of responsibility towards our belongings. In this short TED-Ed video by Christian Jarrett, “Why are we so attached to our things?” he explains some of the research and psychology behind our attachments. For example, Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist who pioneered work in child development, identified the “endowment effect.” Early in life a sense of ownership emerges where we value something more highly as soon as we own it. This can make letting go more difficult. Understanding more about our attachments can be the opening you need to start letting go.

3. Interesting Trend – Letting Go Motivation

Margareta Magnusson

Recently, I came across a phrase that made me curious. It was “Swedish death cleaning.” Have you heard of it? Margareta Magnusson, a Swedish artist and author of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning – How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter,”uses the inevitability of death as the motivation to let go of your unnecessary possessions. The idea behind death cleaning is to reduce the amount of stuff that you leave behind for others to deal with. As someone that has helped many clients to downsize, de-possess or let go of their deceased loved ones things, I understand the value in taking personal responsibility for your own things so that others won’t have to. Reframing the idea of letting go, as a gift to our loved ones could be just the motivation needed to get you through.  

4. Interesting Product – Letting Go Flash Cards

One of the most innovative thinkers and authors in the organizing industry is my friend and colleague, Judith Kolberg. True to her creative process, she developed the “Get Rid of Your Stuff” flash cards. If you’re feeling stuck with what to do with your excess things, you’ll want these cards. There are a dozen different options for letting things go, like donating or selling them, along with tips for each category. Supercharge your decision-making and letting go skills with this well thought out product.

5. Interesting Thought – Letting Go Breath

Have you ever noticed when you hold on too tightly your body tenses up? Your breathing becomes shallow or you might even hold your breath. Holding on requires energy. When we hold on to things, people and places that no longer support us, we’re expending energy and effort that could be released or used in other ways. Let go and release your grip. Take a deep breath in. Let a big exhale out. Repeat as needed. Let go of what’s holding you back.

What are your interesting finds? Which of these resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Come join the conversation!

The time has come to let go. Perhaps you’re ready and are happily anticipating that sense of freedom. Maybe you’re ambivalent and not sure what it will feel like on the other side. You could also be feeling sadness, impending loss, or resistance. Guess what? All of these feelings around letting go are perfectly normal. There are so many reasons why and what we let go of. Depending on the circumstance, our feelings and attitude about letting go vary wildly.

Maybe you’re moving and need to downsize. Maybe you’re feeling burdened by too much stuff and want to lighten the load. Maybe it’s a new season (yes, spring!) and the change has incentivized you to let go, declutter and organize. Maybe the kids are grown with their own lives and it’s time to let go the things they’ve left behind. What is prompting you to let go now?

Letting go is a regular part of the work I do with clients. While the process is stuff-focused, it’s rarely about the stuff. We might be editing and letting go of for example clothing, books, papers, toys, household goods, art or memorabilia. However, what we’re really doing is making room for the present, releasing things from the past that are making us feel stuck, opening up space in our homes and hearts, and readying ourselves for the next phase of life. So it’s kind of a big deal.  While decisions get made one, small item at a time, the positive outcomes and the feelings surrounding those decisions are huge.

So why is it so hard to let go, even if we know that the outcome will be positive? We’re human. We like to hold on to what we know and understand. There’s comfort and security in that. In general, most of us (not all) don’t like change. Or at least we don’t readily run towards it.

We’ve all experienced or know those who have experienced letting go of things, people, places and stages of life. This month for me is an especially big letting go time. You may have read some of the posts I wrote in the fall and winter about preparing for sale our childhood family home of 57 years. In less than a few weeks it will be sold. A new family will move in by the end of the month. Each time I’ve spent in the house these past months, I’ve been preparing myself for the ultimate letting go.

I am so grateful for all of the wonderful, happy memories that are attached to our family home. I’m grateful for the grounding support and stability the home has given to me and so many family members and friends. While I won’t miss having to care for or maintain the house any longer, I will miss being in the beautiful quiet and memory-filled spaces of our family home.

I know it’s time to let go. My heart is full with tremendous gratitude, love, and yes…sadness. Life goes on. We can’t move forward without letting go.

What are your thoughts about letting go? I’d love to hear what you’re thinking about. Come join the conversation!

The day unfolded in surprising ways with one thing leading to the next. It began simply by emptying the dishwasher, a standard household organizational chore. As my husband Steve and I put some glassware away, we started to wonder how to better organize the cabinet contents, which had become too cluttered. The wondering prompted some questions such as . . .

“Do we need that?”

“Do we use that…ever?”

“Are we ready to let ‘it’ go?”

Before we realized it, we’d gone through several cabinets and amassed a pile of objects that we were ready to part with.

I took photos to see if our daughters might be interested in any of the items. We had some takers. The rest will be donated to Goodwill. Internally I felt lighter from clearing out. The cabinets looked less crowded too. There was no more precarious stacking of mugs or glasses. Instead, everything had space and a place to land. At one time the cabinets had been that way, but as you know, maintaining organization requires tweaking things every so often. And that time had arrived.

Another letting go of stuff happened this weekend with my annual changing from winter/fall to spring/summer clothes. This always presents an opportunity to purge and re-evaluate. Like with the dishes, I asked similar questions with my clothes like,

“Will I wear it…ever?”

“Does it fit?”

“Would I buy it today if I saw it in a store?”

For the clothing too, I let go of enough to allow my hanging clothes and drawers to breathe better. Everything felt a bit lighter, myself included.

With the letting go of clothing and kitchenware, and with feeling lighter and less burdened by the stuff of life, Steve and I decided to explore a new place near our home. It was a gorgeous warm and sunny day. We took a long walk in the woods on a beautiful Audubon trail. It was incredible to us that while we’ve lived in the Hudson Valley for over thirty years, we never went to this preserve before, which is only a five-minute drive from our home.

As I walked in the beautiful woods, I thought about how good it felt to let things go. I thought about how calming it was to be in this peaceful, wooded forest with birds chirping, gentle hills and paths to climb, and a scenic pond reflecting the bright, blue sky and fluffy, white clouds on its surface to see. By letting go, I made space to experience something new. By letting go, I made space to mindfully experience nature with joy and wonder without the burden of too much “stuff” weighing me down.

Have you experienced any letting go this spring? Are you thinking about it? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Come join the conversation!

It’s spring. This is often a very happy, joy-filled time of year. The temperature is warming, nature is re-growing, and sunlight abounds. Yet even with these signs of hope and renewal, life can still feel overwhelming.  Why is that? Do we take on too much? Do “situations” that we have little to no control over knock us down? Do we have trouble seeing the path forward?

Whatever the reasons are for your overwhelm, I’m going to offer up one powerful method to help you reduce it and bring back some calm. Before my secret is shared, I offer you a short story.

You may already know this about me, but I love getting together with my family and friends. There’s nothing that makes me happier than sharing stories, time, meals, and laughter. With Passover around the corner, my husband Steve and I have been preparing to host a seder in our home, as we do most years. The group will be larger than usual. I admit that I’ve been stressing out about how we’re going to accommodate everyone. Thoughts like, “Will we have enough seats or space?” and “What if we don’t have enough food?” have occupied my mind.

Finally, though, we figured out the space and food challenges. As I was just settling in and focusing on the other aspects of getting ready, we ran into a major glitch. Our fairly new boiler, which provides our home with heat and hot water, stopped working. Without going into the details of the saga, the upshot is that we now have a huge home project that needs to be completed the same week we’re preparing for our 35 guests to arrive. We’ll probably do a quick fix solution to get our heat and hot water back. Then, after the gathering, we’ll make the major repair needed (as in getting an above-ground oil tank) to permanently fix the problem.

What does this mean? Aside from a huge, unanticipated expense, it also means that the house won’t be in the shape I’d hoped it would be. There might be piles of dirt outside from digging. There could be pipes running on the ground in places they usually aren’t. It might mean that things will be much more chaotic leading up to the event than I had hoped. Then it hit me. There was nothing I could do to change any of those things. In fact, I could be worrying about things that might be non-issues. I certainly wasn’t thinking about what was most important. So what did I do? I tapped into something I already knew, but needed to remind myself of again.

The powerful method to reduce overwhelm and increase zen is to let go!

We have no control over certain things, such as when the boiler or oil tank decides to break. So, I’m focusing on the things that are within my control (like my attitude or how many pounds of brisket I’ll be cooking, or the matzoh balls I’ll be making), and letting go of the perfectionist, worry-laden thoughts. Instead, I choose to remain calm and embrace the joy I’ll experience when our family and friends come to our home. Letting go feels so much better than holding on to worry and stress. Letting go opens the door for experiencing, as my Mom used to refer to as, “the good stuff.”

What helps you reduce overwhelm? Is there anything you’d like to let go of? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Join the conversation!