The Great Clear Out of 2025

A summer cleaning session. *Chapter 97*

I made a very long list this week breaking down our apartment into corners and sections, listing all that I want to get done with them. My standing rule is that I must “touch everything I own once every year (or so),” a guideline that keeps our house from spilling over with stuff. All things need a place and I want to know exactly where that place is.

On the spectrum of ‘love for material nostalgia and the need to keep it’, I fall closer to the side of pack rat than minimalist but still rather close to the middle. Recently, while hunting for a 90s hair clip I knew my mom would still have, I came across a basket labeled “old makeup brushes” and cackled. A printed label, typed into a LabelMaker and applied to a container to keep something deemed “old” i.e. “never going to be used again,” some compulsion for collecting? Maybe a fear of letting go? My mother’s hoarding is charming and hilarious, something I avoid thinking too deeply about lest my existentialism take over and blast me into the era where I’m the one left to sort through it all.

Speaking of, my dad has been rummaging through boxes and boxes of old family photos. After a recent visit from his cousins, Les and Angela, keepers of the bulk of our family treasures, he was bestowed piles of pictures, clippings and notes. We spent last night going through some of it together, how quickly it becomes overwhelming.

The fashions, the fashions. My Dad is wearing pair of grey New Balances identical to the pair Alan gave me for Christmas last year.

What to do with it all? Trashing them feels like sacrilege when generations of hands have touched and held these keepsakes. If you’re woo woo like me, the energy of these objects is palpable. Of course we’ve discussed digitizing it all, putting everything into albums that can sit in a cloud, some forgotten shelf of the Internet. But that feels so stale and boring.

There remains so much wonder, a real humanness to the discovery of artifacts saved and passed down. Deep connection in holding a delicate piece of paper, a note my dad wrote with his little 9 year old hands, it’s completely different than scrolling, gazing at it on a phone. The tactile quality of an actual heirloom is priceless. And so I’ve decided, as long as I know what’s in these boxes we’re saving, they’re allowed to stay on a shelf down here in the 3D world where we “zoom in” on things by bringing them closer to our actual eyeballs, not by using two fingers to pinch a screen.

A step in my guide to manifesting, Yeah, You Can Manifest! (a gift for becoming a Paid Subscriber (along with my cookbook, Pretty Easy)) is, clean out your closet. The obvious idea being, clear the space, make room for something new. It works like a charm. The old adage, ‘the state of your desk, is the state of your mind’ holds true. There’s nothing better than the wide open feeling and satisfaction that comes from checking off a box like:

• organize craft drawer

or

• clean out Tupperware cabinet

A desire to lighten the load not just materially speaking but spiritually as well. To live more simply, less hustle, more connection. Letting go of old patterns that keep us stuck. I’m excited to move forward without so much baggage literally and metaphorically.

The last major purge I did was almost a year ago, I wrote about it then too,

The closets came first, four bags of clothing cleared. I’m proud to claim I know every single shirt, dress and pant I own and even more proud to tell you how ready I was to part with so many. Dragging two giant loads into work, I left with only a quarter of what I brought in, excited to see my friends excited to take my old clothes. In a podcast I listened to a few weeks ago, a Kabbalah teacher explained that when you hold onto things you no longer use, or in this case wear, it’s like you’re stealing them from the person they’re meant for. They’re no longer yours. This is wildly paraphrased, I don’t follow or study Kabbalah, but the sentiment rang so true this week. Seeing my friends light up over dresses and sweaters I loved but would never wear again was soul-filling. Like putting my children on the school bus, watching them go off to live their lives, be special for someone else. Good feeling. Highly recommend.

Saturday Night, by Bonnie Lynn Felton, lynnfelton.com

I suppose it’s a bit presumptuous of me to be writing about the glory of finishing a clear out before I’ve even started. Here I sit cheekily typing to you about my mother’s collection of old makeup brushes when I have a stack of 8 vases all the same shape and size, piled precariously behind our TV. We have no storage inside our one-bedroom apartment, the back of my car houses our supply of heirloom cast iron skillets.

But I have a plan and I’m sticking to it.

Where do you fall on the spectrum of a clear out, are you comfortable with more things or less? Do you have systems for cataloging family photos and treasures? My grandmother made a binder of her life story and I spent the morning flipping through it. A TON of work to compile but HOW fascinating, I love it so much, it’s inspired me to do something similar with all the relics we’ve inherited. But that’ll be a years-long project and I haven’t even checked one box off my 2025 list yet.

Grandmommy Jo ( my maternal grandmother who I am named for, GeLee, my middle name) carefully put together this incredible Adventure binder. She was a pharmacist AND genealogist.

Anyway, I’ve decided this year to take it slow. One corner, drawer and cabinet at a time. Holding all the things I own and deciding what makes it to the next chapter and what moves on to someone else. It always gets a little worse before it gets better, a reminder I’m holding close to my heart in this weird 3D world we live in.

WEARING

French combs, these are what I went hunting for when I found the “old makeup brushes” basket and I’m obsessed. I KNEW Bonnie wouldn’t have trashed them and I was right!

all of these circa 1989-1997

MAKING

Granola No. 5 from

Molly Wizenberg

’s original food blog, Orangette, a bring-me-to-tears absolute favorite corner of the Internet from the middle 2010 era. I cannot remember the last time I shared this recipe with you but it’s one of the greats, a forever keeper. We made a batch a few weeks ago and you should too!

READING

I posted a late night, last minute quickie over on my second Substack, How to Act in a Restaurant, check it out!

I spent the night at my parent’s house this weekend going through old photos and cuddling grandpa-aged dogs. It was sweet and cathartic and sad and happy and made me realize, wow, I can hold all of this at the same time and that’s pretty great.

I really would love to know if you’re in the headspace for a load lightening. A quicker and easier flow to life. Less clogged, less blocked, more space to roam free and feel joy.

Happy belated Summer Solstice! I saw a lightning bug at dusk and nearly cried. Though I may be a melted and sweaty mess for the next four months, it’s easy to romanticize a southern summer. Talk to you next week!