Where can you reduce clutter in your life?

Every morning feels like walking into a room where someone’s left every drawer open, every cabinet door ajar, and every surface covered. Not with real things – but with memories, alerts, plans, and that constant inventory-taking that never quite stops. Always counting. Always checking. Always ready.

I used to think this was normal.

That everyone’s mind was stuffed with emergency supplies for emotional hurricanes that might never come. That they all kept mental stockpiles of responses, reactions, and reasons. Just in case. Always just in case.

My brain works like an overflowing storage unit. A half-heard conversation isn’t just words – it’s another box to unpack, examine, and store away. Store it quickly. Store it now. A casual invitation becomes a whole filing cabinet in my head, crammed with every possible outcome and every potential preparation. Filing. Always filing.

Stop.

Breathe.

The thing about living with a mind that never throws anything away is that you get really good at looking organized on the outside. Like those perfect Instagram closets, nobody sees the mental junk drawers, bursting with things you might need when the world goes sideways.

But lately.
Lately, I’ve been learning about empty spaces. Not the scary kind – the peaceful ones. Those brief moments when I don’t need to keep everything, when the collecting takes a coffee break. I’m learning to notice these moments. To let them expand like morning light in an empty room. To let them be unfilled.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as letting a thought pass without grabbing it and stuffing it away for later. Or noticing how my mind feels lighter when I don’t treat every feeling like something that needs to be archived. These tiny moments are like finding empty shelves in a house I thought had to stay packed to the rafters.

I’m not trying to empty everything anymore.

Instead, I’m learning to sort through the collection, one memory at a time. Some days my mental space is more cluttered than others, and that’s okay. The goal isn’t a perfect blank slate – it’s finding enough room between the stored supplies to remember who I am when survival gear isn’t lining every wall.

Tomorrow will probably feel crowded again.

But now I know that somewhere, behind all the stacked boxes of what-ifs, there’s a room that’s just mine.

The truth is, I’ll probably never fully step inside it. Some boxes you can’t unpack, some supplies you can’t let go. Maybe that’s okay too. Maybe the real peace isn’t in emptying the space completely, but in accepting that some corners of our mind will always be ready for storms that have long since passed.