What I Learned From Lent In 2024

It was pretty damn life changing.

During Lent this past year, I really thought hard about what I wanted to give up. What I finally decided on was clutter.

All my life I would randomly give things up for Lent, like desserts, etc. One year I gave up meat (I’m Catholic—I ate fish). Later, in my single days I would give up alcohol just to make sure that I could.

But this time I wanted to do something different. The more I thought about it, the more it just fit to give up clutter. And by clutter, I meant all clutter in my life. Physical clutter. Emotional clutter. Financial clutter. Time clutter. I went through all aspects of my life and looked for things to ruthlessly clean out. Things that I did not need or even worse, brought me unhappiness.

What I Decluttered

So I started with physical items. My wife and I have a storage unit full of items that we had to put somewhere when we got married. We’ve been talking for 14 years about getting rid of stuff, but never got around to it.

Well, now I did. I went through all of my stuff, and then through “our” stuff. I sold off 6 bankers boxes of CDs and 30 bankers boxes of books to used book stores. It was hard to let go of them—especially the books, but I felt like I had walked outside into fresh air.

Next I looked at emotional and mental clutter. I looked hard at relationships that, as they say, gave me joy, and ones that did not. I kept the ones that I found I really cherished, and let go of the ones that I did not. I really did not tell anyone we wouldn’t be friends or anything like that, but I did just stop associating with people that brought drama or unhappiness to my life.

I have always been something of a productivity nerd, but I did take another look at how I was managing my time and activities. I decided what my real priorities were and arranged my task management to reflect them—and cut out the things that did not.

One of the big things I did give up for most of the year was writing. Blogging is wrapped up in a number of areas that I wanted to declutter. It affects time, money and just plain stress over meeting self-imposed deadlines and commitments.

Finally, it took me over the course of the year, but I really looked hard at any financial clutter I had in my life. A huge chunk of my decluttering was moving off my old self-hosted Wordpress sites and moving to Medium, Substack and Ghost. Another cost I cut was the monthly subscription to Adobe products. The costs for doing things the way I had done them for years was just unjustifiable. Removing these costs from my life was really just smart economically, but it had a very positive impact on my mental health.

I did most of this decluttering over Lent itself, but it turned into a year-long way of life. Now, when I want to buy something, I ask myself if I really need it, and what can I get rid of in return. When I look at any of the things I already have or do, I ask that question as well: do I really need it, and can I get rid of it? As I said: it was, well, liberating.

What I Learned

Letting go of things that I had carried around for years because of my own laziness, my own fears, and worst of all—my own ego—left me feeling like a huge burden had been lifted from my soul. I kept in touch with my wife and some close friends about my progress, and even the act of explaining what I was doing and why I was doing it made me feel like some weight had been removed from my mind. It felt great. It still does.

What I learned is that while minimalism isn’t everything it is cracked up to be. You don’t have to get rid of everything in your life to feel better. Just being honest with yourself and letting go of the things that you just do not need really can help with stress, health and your life in general.

Maybe the hardest lesson for me to learn was that it was my own ego that was leading me to hold on to many of my old books. Books that I kept around because they made me feel smart, an aspect I wanted to project to other people—and not because I really needed them.

The other lesson is just one of fear. Fear of loss, maybe of regret. Personal items that I have from my parents or old friends—those were hard to let go of. I’m still working through that part, but I’m getting there.

OK, It took me a while to get this down in writing. Yes, I am getting back to writing after taking most of the year off, but I am being much more deliberate about it. I am still facing challenges with clutter when I want to buy something, or someone asks me to do something, but I am getting a lot better at telling myself and others “no.”

I really recommend you go through something similar to what I did. You don’t have to be Catholic, and you don’t have to give everything you own away. It doesn’t have to be this complex thing. Just start with a few things, make some decisions and then follow through with letting them go. Trust me—you’ll feel better.

Marc

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