I’m the gardener in our family. Sure, Sallie comes out and helps from time to time, but mostly it’s my domain. Recently I was checking the pansy pots to pull off the old blossoms and check for weeds. Our pansies this year have been phenomenal; they’ve been so robust that I’ve started to call them “shrubs”.

The pots look out-of-control at the start. There are so many blossoms at various stages. First, I pluck the withering blossoms. For a few moments it seems like I’m not making any progress because I find more to pull in areas where I’ve already been. I work some more, and then the pot becomes simpler to view because I’ve worked on the clutter of blossoms. The good ones become dominant and the pot starts to look lighter, brighter. Pull a few more old blossoms and now there’s order in nature again. At least for this pot.

I’ve learned that weeding is an ongoing part of life. I can be a packrat. Every now and then I need to re-evaluate whether something is worth holding on to or not. Sometimes an item’s value may be practical or it could be sentimental.

Saturday I went through my office closet and weeded out the shelves. At first the task seemed overwhelming as there were so many magazines, office supplies, computer supplies, etc. But, one-by-one, I reviewed items and determined whether they held any value for me anymore. Yeah, those older Family Handyman magazines are too good to throw out. No, I don’t need to keep these 5-year-old out-of-date system software disks for the old computer I just replaced. After a while, I had a bag of papers for recycling, a trash can filled with unrecylables, and several items that I might be able to sell on eBay.

It can take a while to sort through items, but there is great freedom in weeding out the unnecessary things in our lives. It makes our lives less cluttered, more organized, and gives us a sense of feeling lighter. I’ve also learned that an item that seems worth keeping at one point in life may become less important later on. Sometimes I’ll keep an item just because I’m not ready to part with it, yet.

I had kept most of my art projects from design school but eventually I have weeded them down to just a few of my favorites. Over time some of the drawings didn’t seem as important to keep, or I finally realized I didn’t care to look at a particular item anymore. If I kept some of these pieces, it would be more out of a sense of “I worked hard on that, it would be a shame to throw it away”. But if I don’t really care for a piece any more, why keep it? And years later I don’t miss those pieces, proving that they didn’t hold that kind of sentimental value.

A simpler life means not keeping things around unnecessarily. Weeding can be a good exercise to help you keep what you truly value in life, and to have the freedom (and sometimes courage) to let go of what you don’t need. And a smaller collection of items is much easier to enjoy.

Just like a good pot of flowers.