tis the season of letting go …

goodbye summer, long beach days and warmer weather!

hello cozy vibes, apple cider donuts and shorter days!

it’s the time of the year that leaves show it’s safe to let go and it has me inspired this year …

let me explain why:

in 2021, I was downsizing my stuff from a one bedroom apartment into a 5x5 storage unit so I could live out of the van I was building out.

y’all know her & love her. if you don’t know her, her name is Juno and she’s a beautiful 1995 chevy G20. 

I had an idea of the end goal - van life - but every time I went to do anything related to decluttering, I found myself overwhelmed.

 I was one person yet it still felt like so much stuff.

 not to mention, all of the emotions that came up as I moved through the process.

around the same time, I had been deepening my studies in somatics and learning about how the body holds an implicit memory and the deeper functions of the nervous system.

 I connected the dots and started to realize how my stuff and my house was influencing my mental health.

the biggest dot I connected was the realization of how important the body - attunement to it and what’s arising - is for the process of home organizing, particularly decluttering, and creating a sanctuary of your space.

knowing this took the process even deeper. I am me, after all.

 it became bigger than just creating a beautiful space or eventually living vanlife.

 it was about supporting my holistic wellbeing for the rest of my life.

from there, a strategy took shape of the dominos that needed to fall to create the space I desired for the vision I had.

the home systems needed to support my lifestyle.

I took it day by day and item by item.

while an item-by-item curation of creating a beautiful home seems glamorous, the decluttering process hit me hard.

this is even before I was expressing my emotions as much as I do now.

things aren’t just things.

anyone who tells you otherwise is lying and disconnected from themselves.

shoes that had been with me since the beginning of college,

journals that held my words of crushes and desires of my heart,

and the items that came together to form my life as I knew it.

some came and some went, and as I watched it go, I saw that aspect of me go with it.

and honestly, I also felt the guilt and fear that I may one day want those items again.

now I understand, and as trite as it sounds, that you have to let things go in order to grow.

there’s a reason the trees lose their leaves and take a whole season to rest.

I had to trust that on the other side of letting go of these things, there was a whole new iteration of my life opening up on the other side of it.

because by letting them go, I could allow a new embodiment of myself and my vision to take form.

in honor of this inspiration, I’m hosting a declutter challenge starting october 2.

I’m teaching this inside the challenge and honestly, it’s so much why of I created it.

to walk you through a process decluttering that cuts the overwhelm, supports your overall wellbeing and you can use for years to come.

to listen to the earth and the season we’re in.

much love, joannaland