What will you keep?

At the end of each year, I purge. I clean out drawers, throw away papers, and haul bags of clothes and other usable household goods to a local Goodwill. On January 1, I can still have dirty clothes in a hamper or dishes in a sink. But if I don’t purge at the end of a year, it’s like the gun fired to start the race and I tripped and fell right out the gate.

The end of 2019 was no different. Days before the calendar closed, I stood staring at the old two drawer file cabinet and it staring back at me; the top-drawer droops to one side from years of pulling and pushing. Although I usually view this ritual as some sort of twisted relaxation technique, this year I felt particularly sluggish toward the task. But the cabinet wasn’t going to purge itself. So, I sucked it up, lugged an armload of files to the bed, and dropped them there. With a kitchen trash bag on one side and a shredder on the other, I got started.

One by one, I poured through old receipts and user manuals for laptops, mobile phones, and other random electronics we no longer own. Wax number candles and deflated Mylar balloons were stored away as relics from past birthdays. I found old city maps, medical bills from annual check-ups, random newspaper clippings, etc. It was crazy to see the things I was holding onto for reasons that, at that moment, I couldn’t even explain. Things that, in some cases, I was still struggling to let go. I whispered to myself, “What will you keep, Monica.”

In those moments, my thoughts shifted beyond the piles of file cabinet fillings that lay before me and on to the many experiences and lessons from the current year rolling to a close. Some memories, events and emotions were more vivid than others. Some good, some challenging, some just bad. And I thought to myself, “what WILL I keep.” What should I take with me into 2020, and what should I leave behind?

In some cases, I’m still making the determination. So, I thought I’d share, because maybe you are, too. And though we’re already halfway through the first month of a new year, it’s not too late to decide what to keep and what to let go. Are we keeping what will equip us for the year ahead and releasing what could weigh us down? I can’t say for certain, but my guess is the decisions could make a world of difference in how this year unfolds.

So it’s worth the ask: What will you keep?