Decluttering can feel like coming face to face with every mistake we’ve ever made. We purchased duplicates and triplicates of things we already own. We wasted time and money on impulse buys we never use. We equipped ourselves for habits and activities we never mastered.

We’d prefer to avoid the physical representations of all that guilt and regret. No wonder we procrastinate getting organized.

We can only move forward if we ask ourselves what these mistakes can teach us about how to act in the future.

Sam Bennett calls this “tuition.” Tuition is the price you pay for learning a lesson. Accidentally purchasing the world’s tiniest post-it notes taught me I either need to actually read the product specifications or I need to give up ordering things online. (I ultimately quit Amazon Prime.)

Marie Kondo talks about thanking each object that we declutter, either for its years of service or for the lesson it taught us in its disuse.

Once we’ve analyzed our mistake and gleaned our lesson, we can either hold ourselves accountable for using up the item, or we can permit ourselves to let it go. Either way, we’ll do better next time.

With gratitude towards our possessions and grace towards ourselves, we can get busy curating our favorite things.