My brother told me the other day that my house is like the Bermuda Triangle. From the outside, everything looks perfectly fine. Put together. Orderly, even. But the moment I need something specific, I just can’t find it. Vanished. Never to be seen again.
So I do what many of us do. I buy another one. And then another. And then, one day, when I finally decide to clean, I discover I own three or four of the exact same thing. That’s exactly what I discovered this weekend, after deciding to face my own Bermuda Triangle because it had gotten to that stage again.
I started with the bathroom and emptied the cupboards. All of them. Every drawer, every shelf, moving everything into boxes. At first, I tried to sort it all out and figure out what to keep and what to throw away. By the time I got to the second box, I was so restless that I decided, just like Ryan in the Netflix documentary The Minimalists, to leave the rest in boxes. I didn’t seal them, though. I wasn’t ready to make my life that difficult in case I needed something.
As I was sorting, one thought kept coming back to me. When did I buy all this stuff I don’t even remember buying?
It’s so easy to fill our lives with things we barely remember. It happens quietly, gradually, one small purchase at a time. It hit me even more now, so close to Christmas. This season has a way of pulling us toward more. More lists. More shopping. More things that soon disappear onto a shelf, then slowly sink to the bottom of a drawer.
This exercise came right on time.
Standing there on my bathroom floor, surrounded by boxes, something clicked. We don’t run out of space because we don’t organize well enough. We run out of space because we keep collecting the wrong things. I couldn’t remember when I bought those objects. They weren’t part of my memories. What I could remember were life chapters. The happy ones. The painful ones. The meaningful ones.
This exercise reminded me that what I want to gather isn’t stuff. It’s memories. Experiences. Moments that don’t need drawers or cupboards to be stored. Moments that live somewhere else entirely.
And it struck me how similar this is to what happens inside us. We collect expectations, shoulds, unfinished thoughts, emotional clutter, often without realizing it. Until one day, we feel restless, heavy, or disconnected, and we don’t quite know why.
Finding your happy place isn’t about adding more. It’s about clearing space. Letting go of what no longer serves you. Making room for what actually matters to you.
My Bermuda Triangle is slowly being cleared out. And maybe, in the process, something else is too. Stuff is getting packed into boxes and moved out to the mud room, making room for what comes next.
And, for anyone who loves art or is looking for a Christmas gift that won’t end up at the bottom of a drawer, you can find my fine art prints at ScenoArt.com.