Just In Case
musings from cleaning my room
This blog was originally published December 11, 2021 at heidivanderpan.com.
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The New Year is right around the corner and a friend recently asked if I wanted to intentionally process the past year and talk about goals for the next. My initial gut-level response?
Absolutely not. Nope. Not interested.
Anyone else have a year of ups and downs? A year of sharp turns and continually trying to get your footing in another new situation? The last thing I wanted to do was take time to process it, I just want the (figurative) blank slate that comes January 1st and to sliiiiide into living my best life.
But then I cleaned my room.
I picked up a sweater and half-heartedly folded it. I knew that its home in my dresser drawer was already stuffed to the brim, but I pushed it in there anyway.
I found myself embarrassed by my lack of effort toward an organized drawer. I’ve never been one to have my dresser and closet in pristine condition but I knew I could give a better effort than what I just displayed.
I paused for a moment and considered what was keeping me from giving more effort to this. I combed through the can-of-sardines that was my dresser drawer and noticed something: the items at the bottom were things I kept around “just-in-case.”
Sweaters that I haven’t worn in years, but kept around just in case it’s the right moment. A few t-shirts supporting athletic teams balled up at the bottom just in case I attended a game. And, of course, articles of clothing sprawled throughout the drawer that were supposed to be living somewhere else but left there just in case I was in a hurry and needed to grab something fast!
These things that I kept around just in case had actually started to hinder my ability to grow into the person I wanted to be - a person who keeps their dresser drawers organized.
It was in this one minute of sweater folding and drawer exploring that I felt the weight of things I was holding onto just in case that weren’t clothes. I’ve held onto ways of communicating, grieving, spending money, pursuing goals, and so much more but I don't have the space for them right now in my current drawer. And because I’m giving them space I don’t have, it’s keeping me growing in the ways that I want (and likely need) to.
So, the following weekend I went to Target (like I really needed an excuse to go?) and got a big storage bin. As soon as I got home I went to my dresser, closet, and other can-of-sardine spaces in my room and sorted. Keep or Donate.
The “keep” pile was then subcategorized into “keep for now” or “keep for later” (can you tell I’m pretty Type A?). This meant that some clothes remained in the dresser drawer while others moved homes to the Target storage bin.
In the days that followed, the half-hearted attempt to stuff my poorly folded sweater into the overflowing drawer kept replaying in my mind. I so badly wanted to organize all my other “just in case” items that weren’t clothing into clearly marked “Keep” or “Donate” piles.
But that’s not how this works. The things that came to mind for me were relational, emotional, and spiritual… things you really can’t put into a Target storage bin, or donate to Goodwill.
So what do we do with those things?
We can set aside time.
Time to recognize what parts of our life are stuff to the brim. Time to discover what exactly we’re keeping around just in case. Time to sort through and decide what we want to do with it.
I’ve also set aside time to say YES to my friend who asked me about processing this year and sharing goals for the next. For me, in order to set clear goals and intentions I need to acknowledge what brought me to my current situation… even if it’s painful.
As I’ve started doing this work (and truly, I am just at the start) these initial questions have been helpful:
When/Where did I learn this?
What parts of this have served me well?
How is this impacting my current day-to-day life?
What do I want to be different about this part of my life?
Sit with these questions. You can physically sit in silence with them or bring a question to mind throughout the day and recognize what your initial response is.
This latter option has been most helpful for me. It keeps the processing fresh and reminds me that it is a process, not something I can check off my to-do list in ten minutes.
My hope for us all is that taking time to recognize what we’re keeping around just in case will open up new spaces for us to grow.