I Let Them Go

Hi. It’s been a while.

Happy New Year to you all. Cheers to another amazing and fruitful 2019!

I took a break from blogging, a much-needed one, to do some self-evaluation and to plan the future of this blog, and my writing at large. This ‘mind vacation’-sort of (that’s what I’m calling it) begun in

the first week of December actually, as I slowly begun to take stock of different aspects of my life. One fact I realised early on was this: my wardrobe was spilling over it’s edges with clothes that I didn’t need. Either because they didn’t fit, or I didn’t like the style, I never wore them. All they did was clutter my wardrobe and prevent me from locating items that I actually do wear.

Trust me, this had been going on for years. On many occasions my mum would get so confused when I would tell her that I didn’t have anything to wear to an event, because she would look to my drawers and see it bursting at the seams with different fabrics. “But you have many clothes Ada”! True, I had many clothes, just that I had no business having a lot of them. I had cleared out bits and pieces of clothes that didn’t fit anymore in the past, somehow it just went back to being the same thing, just with different clothes.

So last month, I decided that enough was enough with the madness. December was going to be the month that I would let it ALL go. I was prepared to do a full sweep, even if it meant having only 20 items left, I would still prefer it to having 100 extra items cluttering up my space. This was the mindset I came home for the holidays with.

To the glory of the Most High, I did it. It took two days-on the 18th and 19th to be precise-and a lot of letting go of sentiments. The rules of thumb I had throughout? If it didn’t fit me anymore, it had to go. If I hadn’t worn it in over two and half years, it had to go. I guess at this point I’ll admit (if you haven’t figured out by now) that I have hoarding tendencies, so I expected to see some old clothes but nothing so way back. Boy, was I shocked.

I had dresses I wore in primary school. Primary school! At some point the whole task became like dipping your hand into a mystery bag, you have no idea what your hands will lay on next. Clothes that I had no memory of their existence came out of this my wardrobe. I couldn’t recall the last time I wore some clothes that came out of there. By the time I was done, the clothes for giveaway fit a rice bag and a ghana must go bag in the largest size.

I felt so relieved and happy! Relieved, because finally I could open my wardrobe and grab something, a shirt for example, without having to grope through loads of unnecessary clothes. Happy, because I was going to bed better knowing that someone who actually needed these clothes was going to be wearing them.

Accomplishing this task was a big deal for me. I’m beginning to understand something from this sermon I heard last year, about “getting rid of the unprofitable so the profitable can take it’s place”. Now I can see what I own, and have space for new ones to come in. This principle worked with clothes and it would with every aspect of our lives.

What would your life look like this year if you let go of every unprofitable ideology, possession, person or whatever else?

Some of us are New Year resolution-making people, some of us are not. No matter the side you’re on, I want to believe that everyone would like to become a better version of themselves. Becoming better would be almost impossible if we still have baggage that does nothing but drag us down and keep us distracted. To take out clothes which no longer serve us is relatively easy, taking out mindsets requires more work and more time but it can be done.

I really hope and pray that 2019 is the year that we decide to let the unprofitable go and the profitable take it’s place. Cheers to that!

Thank you for reading.