This past January I held the second annual #MinsGame minimizing event on Facebook. Thank you to everyone who played and had fun getting rid of unnecessary crap in order to free up space in their homes and lives. It was great to see all the excited energy in the event posts. There are now 500+ fewer “things” in my home and I’m thrilled!
I’ve been minimizing for exactly a year and it’s still interesting to see what I couldn’t get rid of then, but can now, or what I still can’t part with. This time around I struggled with my sketch pads. But through the struggle came an incredible realization, one which would have never occurred to me if I didn’t bother to part with things I don’t use.
Like most young creative people, I wanted to be some sort of artist. I settled on the drawing kind since it seemed most practical and didn’t require expensive tools or lessons, like painting or playing guitar. Every so often I’d find myself in an art store energized by my surroundings and buy various sketch pads, charcoal pencils, etc. But I can count on one hand the number of times since high school I’ve actually sketched.
And yet I’ve had so much trouble parting with them! I always wanted to be a sketcher. I envisioned myself sitting in a pretty park on a beautiful day sketching away some tree in the distance. I rationalized that some day I’d use them. To get rid of the pads seemed to symbolize getting rid of the desire and giving up on that idea of that person I still wanted to be, and just hadn’t gotten around to being.
But as I held the sketch books in my hand last month, I remembered something. Let me back up.
When I was a tween, I was quite literally obsessed with surfing. I won’t go into all the embarrassing details, but just trust me on this. OBSESSED. (It’s embarrassing because no twelve year old with no surfboard who lives in the armpit of New Jersey of all places should be obsessed with surfing.)
I held on to this idea that I was meant to be a surfer until… oh, let me see… last summer!
It wasn’t until last summer that I tried stand up paddleboarding (SUP) and admitted to myself that I enjoyed it significantly more than surfing! The idea came like a betrayal and confused me at first. No, I thought. I have to surf. I spent two decades wanting to do this! I can’t stop trying. So I went surfing and got my ass kicked and nearly drowned in waves too big for me and realized I was having absolutely no fun at all.
When I realized I didn’t have to surf, that I could sell my board, buy a paddle board and never look back, I literally laughed out loud. The thought of doing anything else in the water never once occurred to me because I refused to make space for any other option. I fixed my sights and focused all my energy solely on surfing, never considering anything else. If I hadn’t gone to the beach on International Surfing Day and found the waves totally flat, I’d most likely have not tried SUP for some time. But that particular day I was open to it because there was no other option except to paddle out and sit in the surf twiddling my thumbs.
A space was created and something better took surfing’s place.
I remembered this as I looked down at the sketch pads. Quite recently after seeing a really neat modern cross stitch design, I bought some supplies to try it out and loved the meditative act of cross stitching. It’s perfect for when I’m winding down at night and I’m too tired to read or write and worry that I’ll munch if my hands are free.
Below is a photo of my work in progress. I got rid of the sketch pads. I gave them to Kathy, who does sketch quite often. In their place is now a storage tote full of my cross stitching supplies. In this instance, I literally created space for something that better serves me.
There’s an episode of How I Met Your Mother called “Unfinished” when Robin challenges Marshall and Lily to delete a number in their phones from their past. Marshall doesn’t want to delete some club promoter he knew from his college funk band days because he holds on to the fact that they’ll still play again some day. Lilly gets sad when faced with the idea of deleting the number from her karate dojo because she still hopes to learn karate. These are unfinished passions, just like sketching and surfing were to me.
But in the end they delete the numbers, just like I got rid of my sketch pads and surfboard.Because it’s okay to change and become interested by other things. It’s okay to give up on things that do not serve us.
Ask yourself, is there something taking up too much space in your home or life? Maybe something you are so focused on that you’ve blocked out any other possible options? Perhaps there’s something better that can take its place…
