Let It Go - Peter Walsh Page 0,26

don’t take with you. These go somewhere else, whether you give them to friends, sell them in a garage sale, or have a cleansing ritual where you burn them in a bonfire.

The trinkets. These are items that you’ve collected from family holidays or celebrations that spark a smile but aren’t as important as the treasures. Examples: the Grand Canyon shot glass from your Arizona vacation or the broken pocketknife that grandpa owned that no one remembers him carrying. With you downsizing to a smaller home and beginning a new and exciting phase of your life, now is the time to let trinkets go.

The forgotten. These are the items that usually make you laugh and shrug your shoulders when someone asks where they came from. “I have no idea!” you’d say. If an item has no significance other than it’s been in your home longer than you can remember, then today’s the day to let it go, too. Examples: the paperback that a random person who had a crush on you gave you in high school, or leaves you pressed in wax paper on a random rainy Saturday in your youth.

The malignant. These are items that remind you of negative or painful moments. You hold on to them even though their very presence in your home triggers a memory or emotion that you’d prefer not to have. It’s time to let these go now. Take a moment to honor the younger version of yourself who survived this event, revisit any take-home lesson the object teaches you, and get rid of it now. Examples: the bike helmet you were wearing during the serious wreck, the journal you kept during a painful breakup, or the travel brochures for a vacation you had to cancel years ago so you could attend a funeral.

It’s possible that a friend or family member might want some of your trinkets and forgotten stuff. Or, these items might be valuable enough to sell. Whether it’s through gifting, donating, or selling, let these items go. And for the malignant items? You’re beginning a new day that has no place for anything that evokes a painful memory. Let them go . . . into the trash!

I-Might-Need-It Items

These items have a useful function. The I-Might-Need-It category contains books and magazines on your shelves, clothes in your closet, food in your pantry, office supplies in your desk, and maybe even stuff in your kitchen junk drawer.

I’d estimate that about 80 percent of the stuff in a typical home falls into this category. But you’re not taking all of it!

You’re only going to bring one kind of I-Might-Need-It Items with you. I call these the worthy items. These are things that will reasonably and comfortably fit into the new space you have, which you use regularly and will likely continue to use after your move. A blender, for example, is a worthy item. Your winter coat is worthy, too.

But if you have a blender and a chopper and three other kitchen devices that turn food into tiny pieces, you probably don’t need them all. If you have three winter coats, you probably don’t need all of them—and if you’re moving to Key West, you may not need any.

Your worthy items must have a readily visible purpose in the next stage of your life, and you need adequate space to store them appropriately. You must have a better reason for keeping them than “I just don’t feel like getting rid of this yet” or “I can’t make a decision now, so I’ll box it up, take it with me, and deal with it later.” No doubt, dealing with worthy items is one of the most challenging parts of downsizing, but the effort is definitely worth the return.

Do you have a current ongoing need for this item (in other words, do you use it often)? Then it’s worthy. Do you have a specific plan to enjoy gadgets after your move that you don’t currently use? (For example, you’ve already checked out a golf course so you can swing your now-dusty clubs in retirement, or you’ve signed up for cooking classes so you can use your kitchen gear.) Then they’re worthy.

Are you at least 95 percent sure that you’ll want to offer an item to your kids (and they’ll want it) in the very near future? Then it’s worthy, too.

But thinking you might use an item in a year or two or that your kids will use it when they graduate from college in 3 years are