In the beginning of this year, I started decluttering our apartment. It started on a whim while my partner was traveling for work - I was looking at the waffle iron with caked on crumbles of dough in the creases and thought to myself that we just had more stuff than we had the capacity to take care of. I wanted to spend less time cleaning and tidying and maintaining stuff.
8 months on, much has changed. As our apartment gets lighter, so do I. There literally is so much more light. I like to joke that the apartment basically cleans itself now (which is sometimes not well received, but I too used to wonder how people keep their spaces somewhat organized. To me the solution is obvious now: have less stuff).
What I've been mulling over recently is how empty spaces fill back up. Especially after an episode in which we got rid of our thermomix cooker only to replace it with a food processor (which had fewer functions but still took up an entire shelf in our cabinet and was equally as loud), I started paying attention to this phenomenon.
It was the same with a ceramic cup that broke (granted, my favourite) - which I replaced with two new ones. It seems to almost be a reflex, to put something on a shelf, only because it exists.
I am talking about physical spaces here, but the same applies to spaces in our lives. Emptiness is scary. So, we fill the space which has appeared back up, deferring our discomfort. Faced with a void like that, I typically get busy, many people use shopping, or food, or screens as distractions.
Having noticed this, I now try to give empty space a chance. When something breaks, I go without, at least for a while. When I let go of an item, I don't replace it (this should be obvious, but it isn't). When in conversation, I try and fight the urge to talk, just to fill silence - even if it is a bit awkward. Things often rearrange themselves in unexpected ways.