Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Nostalgia

Recently, I learned that the word nostalgia comes from the Greek: nostos, to return home and algos, pain: the pain of returning home. Interesting. It often seems to me that my clients hang onto things because they’re nostalgic for a time gone by, when the kids were little and cute, or when they were young and single, or even just a few sizes smaller.

But nostalgia isn’t a very productive emotion. We can’t go back, no matter how many talismans we keep. Nostalgia is like picking a scab: painful, but you can’t help yourself. You keep remembering the past (usually through rose-tinted glasses), pretending it was better than the present. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t—but either way, it’s the past.

So much of organizing is about thinking about the future: When are you going to need this? Will you ever really look at this again? Will you wear it again? When was the last time you watched the video of your child’s school concert? Have you ever watched any of the videos of any of your children’s school concerts? Wasn’t sitting through it once enough?

I’m sentimental. I love photo albums; I think it’s nice to keep some heirlooms and keepsakes. And yes, you might again fit into those jeans. But there has to be a limit to what you hold onto. You need to be realistic and keep yourself in the here and now.

In reality, you need so much less than you have. You don’t want stuff to hold you back. I like using my mother’s silver, but I didn’t want to have to iron her tablecloths, so I let them go. Don’t be so nostalgic for your children’s childhood that you don’t honor their adulthood—even if it’s not that cute. And I’m pretty sure that if we spend middle age pining for our own youth, we’ll regret it when we are old.

So carpe diem, folks. Let go of the past and the clutter that’s keeping you tethered to it and make space—psychic and physical—for a new day.