It’s been nearly two years since I began my decluttering journey after reading the master manifesto The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Journey is definitely the correct word here. After my initial decluttering, I continued to work on the minimalist mindset, and, as author Marie Kondo said would happen, realized places and spaces where I’d made mistakes, some by decluttering too little, some by decluttering too much.
It is the places where I did too little that I have begun tackling recently. For example, when I was first decluttering, I kept all of my candles. In general, they just seemed useful. Some of them had specific memories attached to them. But they were tucked away in a cabinet in the kitchen. Though I lit them all up once for fun, when the power went out, it hardly seemed worth the storage space to keep them for just those occasions. Since we were short on daylight anyway, I decided to put some Danish hygge into practice and burn them all to the ground.
As the wax has slowly melted away the past couple of weeks, I have felt particularly accomplished. The table looks pretty. The house smells great. And I’m getting value out of something that was otherwise just gathering dust. My fear is that I may have inadvertently created a new habit. Candlelight is definitely not unpleasant. I have decided that it will be okay, after using up most of these candles, to keep one or two handy in case of a power outage or for the extra coziness it can provide in winter. A few more that were actually on display, being used as decorations, will stay that way.
Speaking of inadvertently creating new habits… Next up, I want to rid myself of the rest of my excess household cleaners. I still have toilet bowl cleaners and Pledge leftover from multipacks that I bought at Costco before we moved into the house. 11 years ago. Hello spring cleaning!
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