The bed in our guest room serves as the staging area for items destined for rummage sales and Purple Heart pick-ups. The ten-year-old sweater that’s sprung a hole, the electric can opener that only works on Mondays when there’s a full moon, the pants that alas, have become too tight in the waist. (mine, never my husband’s.) I love the British tradition of Boxing Day when that which was replaced by Christmas gifts is boxed up and donated to those in need. Sometimes I think of January as Boxing Month. Once the halls are no longer decked, I look around my home and take stock. Things that have been quietly minding their own business gathering dust on shelves or hiding discreetly in closets for years are vulnerable to my annual New Year’s purging.

I am of the when-in-doubt-throw-it-out persuasion and of course, my husband is of the opposite school of thought, but that’s a topic for another post. Where I get stuck is with those items that remain in a sort of purgatory, with “yes, buts” attached to them. The twenty boxes of family slides that there is no point in digitizing, but might I need them as fodder for my writing? Same with a collection of teenaged diaries. Can I really send them to the landfill? Or picture albums from my first wedding, but they contain the last photographs ever taken of my mother. A dingy army footlocker in the basement belonging to a beloved uncle who served in World War II. Orioles stuff, oh, so much Orioles stuff from Wheaties boxes featuring Jim Palmer to a carrier of full classic coke bottles emblazoned with Cal Ripken’s number 8 jersey. Maybe if we keep it long enough, it will bring their mojo back?

Yes, I know it’s called E-bay or contacting a reputable antique dealer and moving on. There are certain things I’m ready to do that with—the Norman Rockwell collectible plates from the 80’s and 90’s, the pressed glass tumblers belonging to my grandmother that I will never, ever use, those old wooden skis that simply moved from leaning against the basement wall of my husband’s family home to the same position in our basement.

I am not a proponent of the Marie Kondo method where you touch each item and examine its relationship with your inner child before deciding its fate, (I mean, who does that?) but it’s hard, sometimes, knowing when to let go. And yet, there’s only so much room in our homes and in our lives. Becoming a little less encumbered with stuff, allows us to see things we’ve missed, clears our heads as well as our spaces, and gives us breathing room.

Sometimes we find another way to bring an item back to purposeful life. My husband has happily taken possession of the tablet I had to have which sat on my desk, unused, ever since I got a smart phone. The diamond from my mother-in-law’s engagement ring now rests in a beautiful pendant worn by my godchild. And at the extreme end, the proceeds from the sale of my father’s massive collection of railroad memorabilia helped to restore a classic steam locomotive which will, after nearly twelve years, finally make its debut in Colorado this summer.

But those instances are the exceptions. More often, we’ve got to figure out for ourselves when something no longer tells our story or the connection’s been lost to whatever made us cling to that book, vase, or set of candlesticks in the first place. At the same time, we are allowed to say, “I must keep this item because it’s important to me no matter how it’s seen or valued by others.”

I was reminded of this when a friend recently described moving her elderly father-in-law’s new wife from her tiny apartment into his home. My friend and another family member filled plastic tubs with the contents of jam-packed kitchen cupboards, while the older woman sat alone in another room, patiently sorting through hundreds of recipe cards for the meals she’d cooked over the years, deciding which she would take with her and which she would leave behind.