'Do you want this?' I say, holding up a pile of '90's rave flyers that have been gathering dust on the bottom bookshelf since the last time we tidied.

'Yes, I'll sell them. A guy in Brighton wants them - I've been looking for them!' he says. Fair enough. We've filled a box with charity shop items we've been carrying around for twenty years in the name of nostalgia. A brass candle holder from India. A tattered post card with blu tac in the corners of the labrinth carved on rocks near Tintagel. A painted egg with Ganesh on it. A book on The Who, with the binding coming away. A copy of The Wurzels on vinyl, scratched an unplayable. A crystal that catches rainbows and dust. We don't keep them because we think they are wonderful. We keep them because they are connected to emotional memory.

^{Image co created on Midjourney by me}

I don't want any of it.

I don't know if it's a part of getting older or what, but the older I get, the more I let go of things, and the more I hate being shackled by them. Once I could reduce all the things I would grab if the house burnt down to a suitcase, then a backpack, then my hands, then nothing at all.

I don't want to be on my death bed pining for the things I feel I should hold onto, material or otherwise.

And none of the things I'd grab in a fire are the things I'm most grateful for.

Still, despite this minimalist practice of constantly assessing what's worth holding onto and what we need to let go, I still feel a little sadness about what I dont have - I don't live by the ocean, for example, and we don't have enough money for what we truly want to do and how we'd like to be living our lives. The fact we have to keep working to survive, that we can't move to where we really want to move because of family, or finances, or global events, or the fact we can't decide together or where that 'other place we want to move to' might be. That I'm getting older.

What we need to throw out then isn't material - it's about the thought patterns and attachments to certain states of being or imaginary paradises of perfect bubbles of happiness that don't actually exist.

^{Image co created on Midjourney by me}

It's a constant process.

One does not just clean out a wardrobe and expect zen in the other waking moments.

I might paint the walls and sweep the dust bunnies from under the bed, but there's still those dusty corners of my mind that need tending to.

It's like one needs to spend time doing laundry, washing the dishes, and sitting down to a quiet moment to reflect on what's really important. Without the last bit, a minimalist practice is just shoving shit under the bed for later, and having it look good on the outside.

And sometimes it's easy to feel resentful, when life is hard. I don't want to do the hard work. I don't want to look around and think 'oh, I'm grateful for this beautiful house I'm in' and 'oh, I'm grateful for rainbows and my health and puppies', I want to scream.

But yeah. There's the mimimalist practice.

The cutting of the branches, the raking of the leaves.

The dust swept, the dishes stacked.

The things that no longer serve you given away, untethered, let go - from brass candlesticks to longing, from old club flyers to wanting a house by the sea, from the odd socks and faded scarves and chipped crockery to the need for things to be other than they are.

This is in response to the Minimalist community's blogging ideas for Week 46.