Why Create Space?

I originally posted this as "Why Make Space", but since, I have changed the wording to Create Space to include the creativity that I want to practice more. I am changing "make space" for "create space" in this edited version.

In my attempt to "create space" as I'm calling part 2 of my Revive55 Project, I am having trouble answering why I am saving certain things. I was looking at things that I was not getting rid of, and was wondering why not? 

In the past few weeks, I have recycled, donated and thrown away more sentimental items than I have in years. I feel like I'm in the process of having a mindset shift. Things that I was holding on to even just two years ago when I started my Revive55 Project, I'm able to let go of now.

For example, I kept magazines and newspapers. I had a box full of them. Two years ago, I got rid of more than half of them...and now, I decreased it even more. Looking at them, I wonder why I saved them in the first place. Some of them are not happy memories; but perhaps that is also a mindset shift that happened to me in the last decade or so. Letting go of sad memories. I don't mean to forget them, but why have something to remind me.

I think rather than asking why I am saving something, a better question may be why do I want to create space? Focusing on my future vision and even focusing on how I feel today may be more impactful.

I have been living in this house for over twenty years. I have accumulated a lot of stuff and memories in that time. Every year I decluttered things that were no longer useful or loved, but sentimental stuff continued to accumulate. What started as one memory box, became two, then four, eight,  sixteen... Okay, I don't think I ever only had one memory box. I left for university with more than one, but you get my point. What started out as a few photo albums became dozens. My digital photo and video collections keep growing. Hard drives and cloud storage keep increasing. How will we find our photo and video memories in 10 or 20 years if we don't curate them?

I have had many birthdays and holidays. I have collected countless gifts and cards. I find gifts harder to part with than things I have bought for myself. Gifts have more sentimental value but should they? If I buy something, it's something I love enough to spend on. I wouldn't necessarily have bought the gifts chosen by others. It's not the thing but the gesture from the gift-giver we value.

As my children have left home, looking at how much they have accumulated makes me realize that perhaps I have encouraged them to hold on to things. There were many times that I kept some things that they were decluttering. There were times when I questioned their lack of attachment to things and "explained" why they were special or reminded them of who gave it to them or where we were when we got them. I don't want them to continue to collect for another 20 years like I did. I also hope to inspire them to let go and make/create space in their lives as a process not a huge mid-life project.

I have read many decluttering books, listened to podcasts and even taken a course. The message is normally to tackle sentimental things last and often times, they don't cover that part.

Sentimental things are personal. We'll hold on to things and let go for different reasons. Hopefully by reading about my "Create Space" journey, you'll reflect on yours and be inspired to make/create space yourself.

Why create space?

I want to create space so that I can enjoy my most meaningful memories. Like I said in a post last year, "they are more beautiful if they are few". Separating our most precious photos, video moments and mementos from the clutter makes us appreciate them more. It also makes us recognize what we value most so we can create more.

I want to create space in order to love what I keep and to keep what adds value to my life. 

I want to create space in order to make new memories. Like I mentioned in my last post, by creating a void, there is room for something new to come into our lives. For example, this is one of my old Facebook posts:

I think my first reaction was that it was a bummer that I got rid of the bag or a Murphy's Law thing. [Of course I get invited after getting rid of my bag]. Letting go of Murphy's Law is another mindset shift I've gone through. I thought of the Law of Attraction because I had been researching snowboard events. I hadn't seen this friend in over a year. When I told her about my Olympic-themed blog and work with SportCafé, she invited me because the Dew Tour would be on and it was one of the first 2014 Olympics qualifying events.  

I didn't think of the "create space" aspect of it at that time though. By letting go of old skiing memories, I made new memories. How many times has this happened and I didn't make the connection?

I decluttered my china cabinet. I was always having to move things to get to what I wanted. I put a lot of it in boxes in a closet, but also donated some. Whenever we have champagne, we have pairs of glasses. With our kids being older, we now often aren't just a couple having champagne so we mix and match glasses.

Although I didn't declutter champagne glasses (yet), two of these are our originals (from a Perrier Jouet gift set) and the other two were being given away by someone in my neighbourhood recently. There was room in my china cabinet for "new" champagne glasses and we now have a similar set of 4.

I may not declutter my champagne glasses. We use them a lot more than our tumblers or high ball glasses (and some of them have sentimal value ;-) - there's that word again). For our wedding crystal pattern, we had 12 of each glass style. We only have 6 or 8 wine glasses left (they were well loved and sometimes broken), so I don't need to keep 12 tumblers and high ball glasses that we rarely use. Create space for what we value, use and love.

Wedding gifts will be a great topic for a future post. For now, here are a few questions that I'll be reflecting on in my quest to create space.

How do we keep our memories alive when we let go of the things or delete photos? How do we decide which memories are worth treasuring and which are holding us back? Am I holding on to something in an attempt to hold on to my younger self? Am I holding on to something because I used to love it? Am I holding on to something "just in case" it becomes more sentimental?

I have to admit that I will struggle in making space and letting go. It's easier to know something than to act on it. That's one of the reasons that I want to continue my Revive55 Project. It helps to reflect when I'm writing about it. 

I know I will be happier with less, but it will still be difficult to let go.

Revive55 Project Part 2: Make Space

My 55 week Revive55 Project ended a year ago. I thought it was a good time to reflect on the project and look forward.

I started the project in the hopes of preserving all my memories. I was feeling like my collection of photos, videos, stories and mementos was growing and was getting out of control. I was overwhelmed with the quantity and was no longer making photo albums or scrapbooks to preserve them. I had started to make yearly photobooks that could hold four times the number of photos in the same amount of space on my shelf but still felt like I wanted to do better.

I thought that focusing on my memories for 55 weeks would help me to "catch up" and help me better remember my stories and moments.

What I found though was that 55 weeks wasn't enough to preserve it all. I also didn't want to spend that much time preserving instead of creating new memories. Once I "caught up", then what? How would I preserve memories going forward?

The R55 Project started out with a bang. I had lots of plans. I did lots of shopping - buying products that would help preserve and display mementos and photos.

Many "memory projects" planned went undone or ended up half-done. 

During COVID, I saw a meme that said if only I had a week (or a month) at home I'd get my unfinished projects completed. Then COVID gave us months at home and projects still went undone. So as some of my projects went undone, I wondered why. Was it because they weren't important or it wasn't worth the time they would take? How could I complete them in a better way?

Having taken a break and gained perspective, I am ready to re-focus my efforts to finally achieve what I had hoped. What I wanted was to feel like the memories that mattered were being collected and enjoyed.

Home organizers will say that decluttering is the first step to organizing a home. In hindsight, I see that I could have started there, but I wasn't ready. I made the rookie organizing mistake to go buy containers to organize the stuff rather than removing the excess first to see what containers were needed.

I still had a memories journey to take before I was ready to see that I shouldn't want to preserve it all. As much as I did preserve many memories during my Revive55 Project,  I learned that letting go is just as important.

I read the Law of Attraction years ago. Looking back at my notes, I am reminded that Tool #9 is to "create a void or a vacuum". What this means is that we need to create space in order to attract what we want to fill it. The example in the book is in order to attract more clients, we need to make space in our filing cabinet for the new client's file. If the cabinet is bursting at the seams, there is no room for new clients.

When my memory boxes and photo albums were full; I would buy more. Eventually, my shelves and closets were full. My house isn't getting any bigger so I needed a better way. 

Creating a void and making space would make room for new memories and isn't that the point in life is to experience it and not just to collect it?

The other thing I learned during my project is that by preserving it all, we diminish the value of the really special ones. Since my memories were piling up and not "preserved" I started to collect more mementos and to take more photos in the fear of forgetting, but this caused the most memorable ones to get even more lost amid the clutter. The quote I loved was "they are more beautiful if they are few". You can read my blog post about that quote here.

During my project, I was also trying to "unearth" stories I may have forgotten, but I learned that sometimes, we forget stories for a reason. A little digging reminded me of an unpleasant memory. Turns out there was a reason I had forgotten the details. 

My old way of preserving memories was no longer working and I recognized that spending 55 weeks trying to preserve them in the old way wasn't the answer. 

I wanted to find a better way and it needed to start by letting go of the quantity to find the quality.

Knowing that decluttering memories will make me happier doesn't make it easier though. Knowing something sometimes isn't enough to act but I am ready to try.

My new focus of my Revive55 Project will be to make space and to preserve only what is most meaningful.