There’s something in your home right now that you’ve been meaning to deal with for years.
You can probably picture it without trying. The thing on a shelf. The box you’ve moved twice without opening. The drawer that catches when you try to open it because something inside is jammed against the side.
You know you don’t really need it.
You know it’s taking up space.
You know your life would be a tiny bit lighter without it.
And yet.
For me, it’s a set of my grandmother’s china in the cabinet above my stove. Twelve dinner plates. Eight cups and saucers. A platter I haven’t used in fifteen years.
I don’t host the kind of dinners that need fine china anymore. My grandmother has been gone for over three decades. The dishes will not be used by anyone in my house in this lifetime.
And I cannot give them away.
I’ve tried. I’ve taken the platter down, set it on the counter, and put it back.
More than once.
What stops me isn’t the value of the china. Or the memory of her. Or even the hope that someday my daughter will want them.
What stops me is something else. Something I don’t quite have a word for.
That something is why you keep clutter, and it’s what this post is about.
It’s also the seven uncomfortable reasons it lives inside almost all of us.