April 2nd of 2015 was one of the coolest days of my life.
I was in California, visiting the Halters, with the boy I was dating/really liked.

I had my Instax and we took a bunch of pictures.

Whenever I take pictures with the twins, we divide them up at the end of my visit. They keep some and I keep some. Naturally, I kept that picture in the top leftish corner of me and the boy I was all about. I tucked all of my pictures into the collection of Instax that I kept in my wallet.

Four days later, that boy kind of messed my life up. and every time I opened my wallet to proudly show people the little loves of my life, I’d have to quickly shuffle past that picture of us. I couldn’t throw it away, because I was so hopeful that we could be friends again at some point. And maybe it wouldn’t be a picture of two people who had some great romantic love story, but perhaps it could be a testimony of reconciliation and forgiveness and the kind of love story that is often overlooked – the friends through thick and thin kind.

I held on hope for that even when he blocked me on Twitter. On his personal account and non-profit account and faith account and business account. and when he blocked me from his account in instagram. and unfriended me on Facebook. and blocked me from his non profit account on instagram. and banned my blog page from liking his non-profit Facebook… and his business Facebook… and when he blocked me on Pinterest… and when he banned me from liking his business page from my personal Facebook… and when he finally blocked me from liking his business on Instagram. It happened every few days over the course of two months, and I was radio silent the entire time, praying that the storm would die down and I could approach him with white flag waving, asking if it was safe to come out yet.

One day during the summer I was at camp, journaling. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to write his name in my new journal. I didn’t want this journal to be full of confusion and hurt. I wanted it to be hopeful and full of grace. I pulled out my pictures to tape one into my journal, and I saw the picture. I looked at it and cried a little bit because I couldn’t throw it away. It wasn’t trash. Knowing him was a special year of my life, regardless of how it ended, and I didn’t have the hardness of heart to throw it away.

So I ran to my friend Donna. The one who has been so divinely placed into my life to cry with me and to let me cry with her. Donna, who knows so deeply what it means to wait on the Lord. Donna, who has always shown me how to hurt with grace and gentleness. and I asked her if she would please take my picture and do with it whatever she thought was best.

In September, I was hurting. and I wrote about Donna sending me a message at the very moment I needed her. In the message, she told me about that picture. She’d taken it all the way back to Australia and after having washed a certain pair of shorts THREE TIMES, she reached into the pocket and pulled out that picture.

You know how when people clean, they divide things into piles like KEEP, GIVE AWAY, THROW AWAY?
Donna let me give my emotional clutter to her. By accepting that picture and giving me a reassuring hug, she took the massive weight of a tiny picture into her life.

Sometimes when things hurt us and we don’t want to be reminded of it but we can’t bear to throw it away, we need to give it away to someone who recognizes the importance of it but who is more emotionally attached to us than the thing; who can be trusted to do what they see fit with our pain.

Right now one of my favorite songs of hope just came on shuffle, and the words of the song seem appropriate to share in light of this looking back on one of the most freeing moments of 2015.

“One, two, three, four steps
Take a little more with you
Show me one more step in the world
Thats all I need to move on.”
-Will Reagan & United Pursuit

A little more. One more step. That’s all.

Happy 2016. It’s still in the “let’s do this!” time of the new year, you know? Like hypothetically I’m still making good use of the gym membership I just bought. But I didn’t buy a gym membership or anything. I just mean… it’s all still new and there’s still beginning-of-the-year motivation.

I’ve been meaning to catch y’all up on my decluttering. It’s almost been HALF A YEAR since I decided to start decluttering. I started with the top of my dresser and then moved on to my desk. I decided the next thing to tackle was the side of my bed, because this is the mess you’d see when you first walked into my room:

Not only was my nightstand completely overrun with stuff, it was so messy because that’s just what happens when things feel cluttered, you know?

This is what it looks like when you walk into my room today:

No random lotions or anything on my nightstand; now it’s just my bedtime smells.

That “be brave” print is actually a card from Robyn! I love it.

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Instead of a bunch of random books, I decided to keep the books I need most often right here. My She Reads Truth study that I’m doing with my friends, my Bible, my journal and the SRT notebook. Topped off with everyone’s favorite blogger bedroom staple, a Bath & Body Works Candle. Winter is actually my most favorite smell; I stock up so that I can use it year-round, but this year I’ll retire it for my other favorite: SWEET SPUN SUGAR. You get it at Target. It is pink and smells like cotton candy. Sold.

Also that basket is full of slippers and cozy socks. I’m really hardcore about keeping my feet cozy.

Doesn’t it look so much better? And it has so much more PURPOSE. Since I was sitting on the floor, I decided to give you a glimpse of what will be the most difficult part of my room to declutter: UNDER MY BED.

I literally do not have time to begin to think about going through that stuff.

But I did need to find a next space to declutter. It took me no time at all to figure it out.

My bookshelf.

Here, let’s go layer by layer, shall we?

Two random boxes. a little container full of candles. Files with credit card information and blank paper, and my grandmother’s Bible.

My Bibles and some Bible study resources and a bird because I’m from Portland and I’ve heard we put birds on things.

Books. A random basket from the Target $1 section that is LITERALLY mentioned in my first decluttering post, which holds a $1 section jar filled with $1 section washi tape. that’s basically the only thing in that basket. and a bunch of jars from the $1 section. Anybody want to buy some coffee scrub? I bought those to make coffee scrub in 🙂 and a jar. I have no idea what’s in it.

Extra piggy banks (when you save your change for like 3 years at a time, you need more than one). Random cards. A thing that shows instagram pictures but I can’t get it to connect to the internet because I keep forgetting to take it to Starbucks and use their wifi like the company told me to a year ago. A thing to make journal cards. and a box with something emotional in it.

Books. Drawers from IKEA filled with random stuff I don’t know what to do with. One of the drawers has a purpose; it has the notes I take from sermons in it! The other ones are catchalls.

You know… crayons, blank notebooks, random binders and address books and magazines and it appears there are some books. Who even knows.

So that’s my next project.

Keep in mind: this isn’t just cleaning. It’s not “I will straighten this stuff up.” This is going through and getting rid of things I have no purpose for. That bird is probably going to go, just saying.

Man. Feels good to be back in the swing of things.

Other posts on Unstuffing:

• Unstuffing
• Unstuffing // Dresser Corner
• Unstuffing // Desktop
• Unstuffing // Unstuffing a bunch of stuff

The other day I opened my closet and thought, for the first time in my life, “I don’t think I need all of this stuff.” I began to think about the last time I’d worn certain items, and asked myself why I hadn’t worn them in awhile. Then I moved on to the bottom right drawer of my dresser: the jeans. See, I once realized I’d lost 38 lbs since my highest weight. The number is now around 50 pounds. So I tried on some jeans and put a few pairs that were… wait for it… TOO BIG… in a pile to take to Plato’s Closet.

And then I realized… you know, I haven’t consistently worn dresses in awhile. So I took every single dress I own, threw it on my bed, and started trying every single dress on. INCLUDING… Bridesmaid dresses. Check this:

This first dress is one I wore last September in Rachel’s wedding.

When I got the dress it fit really nicely; they didn’t alter the fit at all. When I tried the dress on, I thought “okay it fits kind of the same,” but when I saw the pictures I realized that the waist part is actually more loose now! Also this dress is just the cutest. It makes me feel like a princess.

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The next dress is from August 2011, one of my favorite weddings of all time because it was at CAMP ARNOLD!

I was looking for a picture from Sarah’s wedding and I saw this one and was like… wait, what? First, just note how much shorter it was on Sarah’s wedding day. Second, don’t pay too much attention but I was snug as a bug in that dress. When I put it on, I literally thought “this is what it feels like to wear a potato sack.” There was NOWHERE for it to cling, it just hung flat. This was the moment I thought “okay, maybe my weight loss is actually physically noticeable.”

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But wait for this one.

This is from my friend Brittany’s wedding in April 2011.

When I wore this dress, I had no problems keeping it up. It’s strapless, but it had enough to stay in place. Now it wouldn’t even stay on my body.

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Okay so here’s the thing. I didn’t stop there. I tried on every… article… of… clothing… I… own. Seriously. I tried it all on, and I decided.. some of this needs to go.

and you know what’s crazy? I kind of felt awesome about it. Because I realized this little cycle:

Losing weight –> Selling clothes –> Making a little $$ / un-stuffing –> less to worry about –> more time to do other things –> like sleep –> sleep helps with losing weight…. see this cycle? I realized that so much of what I’m currently tackling is all connected.

As I get rid of stuff in my room, I’m appreciating the value in the things I keep, which makes me less likely to go buy stuff just to make myself feel good. That helps me save money and keep an easier living space. Having a clear mind like that helps me stay focused on things like losing weight. It’s all connected.

I’m seeing that there’s a lot of stuff in my life to unstuff. I’m attempting to unstuff my debt (slowly… but surely. You know who is KILLING this debt repayment stuff? ROBYN. Go read this post like RIGHT NOW). I’m attempting to unstuff my body. I’m attempting to unstuff my closet, my room, under my bed, the drawers, the bathroom, my car, the garage…. not all at once, obviously. I’m just realizing that having lots of stuff doesn’t make me happy. Doing lots of THINGS makes me happy. Seeing lots of PEOPLE makes me happy. Being lots of places, drinking lots of coffee, having lots of conversations, hiking lots of miles… all stuff that makes me happy. Stuff isn’t cutting it anymore, and I’m tired of it.

This month I made a goal to unstuff by my bed. I’m getting there. This was a really healthy detour. I’ll tell you how much I make at Plato’s…. when I finally take it down there.

So here’s to progress in all the things that matter.

I have a problem.

and that problem is called STUFF.

Across from me on my dresser are a bunch of nail polishes. My nails have been painted for roughly 3 days since April. My wall boasts a whole shelf full of sprays/perfumes that I rarely think to use because I have endless amounts in my bathroom, too. I see a tin FULL of pens and pencils and piles of clothes I’ll have to cram into my dresser. It’s suffocating.

As if to prove my point, I went to grab my camera (which I brought in from my car an hour ago) to take a picture of it, and I cannot find it. I know it’s somewhere in all of my STUFF, but I can’t find it.

Here’s a weird thought. Part of the reason why it’s so easy for me to carelessly spend my money is because I have so much STUFF that none of it has any real significant value, ESPECIALLY if I buy it cheap. What’s ONE MORE NAIL POLISH I won’t use? I already have like 45 of them, so one more doesn’t require much thought. Another cute notebook to add to my pile of unused journals? Sure… I’ll eventually get to them.

The clutter in my life has a weird affect on my spending habits. I don’t really need anything, but I buy things that are cute because it might look cute tucked away the gazillion other cute things I’ve purchased in the past few years. Buying something new doesn’t create any sort of real change in my life because I buy things to fill holes… that weren’t there. I’m guilty of this on the very smallest scale (which adds up to big problems!). Sometimes I buy a new wire basket in the $1 section at Target because it’s really cute. But I didn’t need a new wire basket. Now I try to figure out where to put it and what to put in it, and I often give up and it ends up in random places because it’s a completely irrelevant purchase, even if it was only $1.

aaaaaand I’m done. I’m officially on a mission to unstuff my life. I don’t want the mental, physical and financial clutter of collecting material possessions.

I’m starting with that dresser I wrote about earlier. My goal, by this time next week, is to have unstuffed the top of my dresser. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to throw it all away, but it’s either going to be utilized, organized, or given away.

Don’t judge me, but I’m about to post pictures I took on my phone as a starting point. You know, a “before.” Keeping it real here, people. Keeping it real.