Some Things You Get to Keep

Not Everything Needs To Go

Everyone seems completely obsessed with purging. Get rid of this. You don’t need that.

I get it. I recently spent a Saturday afternoon going through a massive amount of junk in my garage in order to be able to fit my car in there for the first time in eight years.

That garage held all the angst of my marriage. It was a wasteland of everything my ex-husband never cleaned and eventually left behind.

I must say, it felt amazing. I thought it would be more difficult than it was. It was easy because there was not a lot of emotional attachment to anything in that garage. That wasn’t my drill. That wasn’t my saw. That picture frame. That stud finder. It’s really hard to feel like you need to keep those things.

I have a friend who has moved a lot in the last five or six years. He’s become the king of paring down and purging.

Knowing that there’s going to be another move in his future, he’s already started purging again.

I asked him what on earth he could possibly have to pare down. I’ve been in his apartment a few times and there’s not much…