Making Room for the Life I’m Living

I am not a hoarder. Never have been. In fact, since perimenopause decided to amplify my OCD tendencies and shine a great big spotlight on my ADHD, I’ve become even less tolerant of clutter and things that don’t have a purpose. I like things organized, I like things to have a home, and I really don’t like unnecessary stuff taking up space. At least, that’s what I’ve always believed about myself.

Tim and I have spent the entire weekend overhauling my sewing room, and what was supposed to be a fun project to create a beautiful, functional space for my ever-growing quilting obsession has unexpectedly turned into something of an emotional journey. As we’ve emptied drawers, moved furniture, opened boxes, and rearranged what feels like every square inch of that room, I’ve found myself asking the same question over and over again. Why am I saving this?

I’m not talking about the fabric, quilting supplies, or the ridiculous number of projects I have running through my head at any given time. Those things have a place in the life I’m living right now. I’m talking about the photographs, the souvenirs from trips, the little keepsakes, and the random things that have followed me through multiple moves and different chapters of my life. Things that have absolutely no practical purpose anymore but somehow feel impossible to part with because of the memories attached to them.

The biggest stumbling block this weekend has been my grandmother’s ironing cabinet. From a practical standpoint, it makes absolutely no sense to keep it. It’s too small to be particularly useful for the amount of pressing I do when quilting, the door opens in the wrong direction for where I’d need to put it, and after spending time in both the attic and the garage, it’s definitely seen better days. It’s not especially pretty anymore, it doesn’t fit the new layout, and there are a dozen reasons why getting rid of it would be the logical decision. But every time I look at it, I can vividly remember sitting in Mom’s sewing room as a little girl, watching her iron PawPaw’s shirts on that very ironing board. I can still picture her standing there, going about an ordinary task that probably seemed completely insignificant at the time. It’s funny how the most mundane moments of our childhood can become some of the most precious memories we carry into adulthood.

And that’s where things get complicated. Because that cabinet isn’t just an old piece of furniture to me. It’s a connection to a person and a time in my life that I can never revisit. But the more I’ve thought about it this weekend, the more I’ve started questioning whether keeping the physical object actually does anything to preserve the memory. I don’t need the cabinet sitting in my sewing room to remember Mom ironing PawPaw’s shirts. That memory is so clear in my head that I can close my eyes and see it without any help from a piece of furniture. So why does the thought of letting it go feel like I’m somehow losing a little piece of her all over again?

The same question applies to so many other things I’ve come across this weekend. Photographs of my children when they were little, souvenirs from trips taken in another chapter of my life, keepsakes connected to Fred, and things that remind me of people who aren’t here anymore. I can spend hours looking through these things, remembering who we were, where we went, and what life looked like before everything changed. But no matter how many things I keep, they aren’t going to make my children little again. They aren’t going to bring Fred home. They aren’t going to give me another afternoon with my grandmother. Those chapters are over, whether I’m ready to admit it or not, and keeping every physical reminder doesn’t change that reality.

So at what point does holding on to things stop being a way of keeping the people we love close and start preventing us from making room for the season of life we’re actually living? That’s the question I keep coming back to, and I genuinely don’t know the answer. I don’t want to erase the past or pretend those people and experiences weren’t incredibly important parts of my life. Quite the opposite. They helped shape the person I am today. But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life surrounded by things that remind me of what used to be while struggling to make room for what is.

Of course, my brain doesn’t work through these things in any kind of orderly fashion. My ADHD brain takes one perfectly reasonable thought, bounces it off another, and before I know it, I’ve got a hundred thoughts ricocheting around like ping pong balls that nobody can control. One minute I’m trying to decide whether an old ironing cabinet deserves a place in my newly designed sewing room. The next I’m remembering my grandmother, then my kids when they were little, then Fred, then wondering where on earth all the years have gone. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I remember I’m supposed to be organizing fabric, but now I’m standing in the middle of the room holding something I haven’t looked at in ten years, wondering why I can’t bring myself to put it in the donation pile. It’s exhausting, and I’m sure Tim has wondered more than once this weekend how a simple room makeover managed to turn into such a complicated emotional exercise.

I know he doesn’t really understand it, and I don’t expect him to. Tim isn’t particularly attached to things. He’s much more practical about possessions, and if something no longer serves a purpose, he’s perfectly content to let it go. In a lot of ways, I envy that. I wish my brain could look at an old piece of furniture, recognize that it doesn’t fit or function the way I need it to, and simply move on. Instead, I see the people, the places, and the moments attached to it. I see the little girl sitting in her grandmother’s sewing room. I see the young mom raising her children. I see the wife who had an entirely different life before this one. And suddenly getting rid of an object feels a whole lot bigger than just clearing out some clutter.

But here’s the other side of all of this that I keep trying to remind myself of. I have a wonderful life right now, too. I have Tim, who has spent his entire weekend helping me turn a room into a space I’ll genuinely love spending time in. I have grown children building lives of their own, a granddaughter who has brought an entirely new kind of joy into our family, and a creative passion that has become such an important part of who I am. There are new experiences to have, new places to explore, new quilts to make, and memories I haven’t even begun creating yet. This chapter of my life deserves space just as much as the ones that came before it.

Maybe that’s what I’m struggling to figure out. How do you honor the past without letting it take up so much room that the present has nowhere to settle? How do you decide which things are truly treasures and which things you’re keeping out of some misplaced sense of obligation to the memories attached to them? And perhaps most importantly, how do you convince your heart of something your logical brain already knows? That letting go of an object doesn’t mean letting go of the person who once owned it, the life you once lived, or the love you still carry for both.

I don’t have a neat and tidy answer to any of those questions. I’m still standing in the middle of a half-finished sewing room trying to figure out what stays and what goes, while my brain bounces between excitement over the new space and sadness over the things I’m considering letting go. Some of those things will absolutely stay, because they bring me joy and deserve a place in my home. Others probably need to find a new home, even if making that decision comes with a little sadness. And I’m beginning to think it’s okay for both of those things to be true.

What I do know is that I started this weekend trying to make room for a new sewing machine, better furniture, and a more functional space to create. I wasn’t expecting to find myself confronting how tightly I’ve been holding on to pieces of the past or questioning whether the things I’ve saved are actually helping me remember or simply making it harder to move forward.

I still haven’t decided what to do with my grandmother’s ironing cabinet. Maybe I’ll find a way to make it work, or maybe I’ll finally decide that its purpose in my life has been fulfilled. Either way, I’ll always remember sitting in that sewing room watching her iron PawPaw’s shirts. That memory has survived decades, moves, marriages, children growing up, and more life changes than I could possibly count. I suspect it’s strong enough to survive without the cabinet, too.

Maybe making room for this season of my life doesn’t have to mean closing the door on all the seasons that came before it. Maybe it’s simply learning that I can carry the memories forward without having to carry every single thing that goes with them.

And maybe, for now, that’s enough.