A Decluttering Challenge For Lent

You can take the girl out of the convent but.... 😆

As thoroughly lapsed and non-catholic-identifying as I have been for about 37 years, there is STILL a little inner radar that pricks up around about Ash Wednesday. And I can still hear my mother and the Sisters of Mercy sternly advocating that one HAD to give up stuff for Lent. To atone. And so it was this morning as my foggy brain grappled with that "What Day Is It?" question somewhere before 5am that I realized it was the dreaded day, Ash Wednesday.

I suddenly felt gritty greasy ash being smeared on my forehead.

Determined to clear my head and distract myself from a whole exhausting slide down THAT memory lane, I scrolled through social media over early morning tea. Precisely for distraction. But as is mostly the case when we try to avoid something, I walked straight into it's sticky web. Within moments I SAW a post - an answer resonating back to me - on my newsfeed about what one might/should give up for Lent. No, not sweets, alcohol, sex or swearing. Sweet goddess forbid.

I'd like to attribute the idea because it isn't my own - enormous thanks to https://becomingminimalist.com - an awesome website full of practical ideas. I liked this thought so much that the idea has grown through the initial resistance created by the word "Lent". It's sort of like a backwards Advent Calendar, minus the chocolate or the angel pictures. 😆

Each and every day during Lent - from today until Easter Sunday - remove a bag of unwanted, unused STUFF from your house/garage/office. And donate or recycle it.

Bags of Stuff.jpg Image Credit

Now if you like to live and travel relatively lightly as I do, you may not have anywhere near that much stuff to release. You may have only one small brown paper lunch bag's worth each day, or even one item. It matters not. What matters is that you use the coming 40 days to systematically review your home, your underwear drawer, your old love letters, your mismatched tupperware lid collection, your empty hoarded jam jar stash or the boxes of paper and old documents stored in your office.

Let go of stuff that no longer serves you.

Create space.

Open the way for new energy & new beginnings.

While I may have happily stepped away from the rigid Catholic liturgical year, I think we HAVE collectively lost something without the annual seasons of preparation, whatever brand of God or religion they come from. Sitting here in Buddhist Thailand I'm decided, for the first time in about 40 years, to follow a releasing practice during Lent. Not because it's Lent, per se, but because I enjoy and feel so much freer through the process of cleaner, clearer spaces around me and less, old energy. The trigger presented itself today and I'm up for the challenge.