Here’s an excellent article from coach and consultant Susan Bock.

For me 2009 was a year of tremendous learning and change, love and loss, as well as shedding stuff and organizing.  Now that the frenzy of activity has passed I have enjoyed some time to reflect on many things including lessons learned.

The lesson revealed to me was one my dad tried to teach me more than once.  You see we moved quite a few times.  Each time he had us take things that were perfectly useful, but that we had not been using (or even remembered we had!) and put them in a box labeled “good junk”.  He would date the box.  One year later, after we were long since settled into our new home, he would take the box and donate it.

Despite our pleas to take just one last look because we felt compelled to be absolutely sure there wasn’t something we really needed in that box, he would say NO emphatically.  He reminded us that we already knew what was in there.  Given we had not felt the need to open the box for any of it for a whole year, why would we think we needed any of it now?

Good question!

I think the reason is because it can be really hard to let go, even when we know it is the right thing, the best thing, or simply that we have no real choice in the matter.  While I started 2009 on a mission to get rid of things, in the process I let go of much more:  some out of choice and some due to circumstance, and sometimes more gracefully than others.  Yet I leave this year feeling somehow lighter and freer.

The most obvious thing I learned is that clearing physical space creates mental space.  Turns out it is also the key to staying organized.  This is common wisdom perhaps.  But as the saying goes “if you know but you don’t do then you don’t know”.  Thankfully, I now know this to be true!

Yet the practice of eliminating physical clutter in my home carried into letting go in other realms.  I have numerous boxes in my attic and drawers full of stuff from prior jobs and clients.  I have for years planned to go through and sift out the “good, still useful stuff”, but instead I simply keep collecting more to “go through some day”.

I now realize it is nothing more than “good junk”.  It was important to me once.  It all served a meaningful purpose.  There are things in there I am sure I was proud of creating or being a part of at the time.  It might even be a fun walk down memory lane to go through it.  I will keep a few artifacts of my past work, of course, but the ones that have mattered to me are not hiding in those boxes – I know exactly where to find them.  Besides, how much do I really need to keep and what is going to be relevant anyway?

Perhaps the most important question I asked myself is what could any of it have to do with my future? My ultimate answer: nothing…if I am willing to put my faith in the future.