For many of us, the year’s end seems like the opportune time to purge our homes. Maybe it’s getting rid of toys cast aside or outgrown to make room for newly acquired, big-kid Christmas gifts.

Perhaps it’s hauling Hefty bags, filled with half the contents of your closet, to a donation center because you’ve finally come to terms with the fact that the pairs of size 4 jeans you’ve been hanging onto since college no longer fit past your knees, which no longer tolerate 5-inch stilettos.

It could be going through your kitchen with “new year, new you” enthusiasm and discarding any lingering Halloween candy, squirreled-away Christmas tree cakes, and dregs of eggnog.

Possibly, it’s ridding your bathroom cabinet of threadbare washcloths and bleach-mottled towels, replacing them with the brand-spanking-new sets you splurged on during after-Christmas sales.

For me, it’s been all of those purges and more. A home renovation has forced my family and me to go through just about every square inch of our home, that we’ve lived in for over a decade, to assess what ought to go and what was OK to stay.

This has been a relatively easy task for my minimalist husband, who would just as soon get rid of everything but the kids, me, and his prized Mickey Mantle card. As for me and my ability to part with various things, I’d give myself a solid B-, which is pretty darn good considering that I watch episodes of Hoarders and feel more empathy and solidarity than disgust and horror.

Purging our kitchen wasn’t so tough. I trashed plastic Elmo sandwich holders once used by my now almost-middle-schooler, spices that expired in the George W. Bush era, 20-plus beer Koozies we’d amassed over the years at various weddings, and no less than 75 plastic food storage containers and lids (none of which managed to pair together).

I even cleared out an entire half-drawer’s worth of novelty corn-on-the-cob handles. The tips of our fingers may be a little blistered during fresh corn season, but hey, now I have drawer space for a nice new set of matching Tupperware.

Paring down our bathroom cabinets wasn’t too painful either. I tossed ancient mini hotel soaps and shampoos from just about every location in the continental United States, and towels monogrammed with the initials of my maiden name. (I’ve been married for 16 years).

I tossed a bottle of Itch-X spray purchased after my husband contracted poison ivy on a camping trip in college, and a vast collection of long-ago expired lotions and potions that promised to stave off crows feet, promote reverse aging, erase stretch marks, and diminish under-eye circles. (Spoiler alert: They didn’t work.)

I managed to minimize my wardrobe with minimal hesitation. My drawers and closet were rid of — among other “vintage” items: a stack of holey concert T-shirts; the aforementioned too-small blue jeans; black combat boots; chunky silver and black costume jewelry from a questionable phase in college; tiny clutch purses that aren’t meant to hold a pair of readers; my wallet and keys; my husband’s wallet and keys; a pack of tissues; two kids’ emergency snacks and water bottles; a box of Dramamine; an iPhone; an iPad; a Nintendo Switch; three pairs of earbuds; a value-sized bottle of Motrin; a box of Band-Aids; 10 shades of lip gloss; stray trampoline park sock; and a half-pound of cracker crumbs for good measure.

My husband and I approached the purging of the other shared spaces of our home with enthusiasm, inspired by the growing feeling of centeredness that comes with existing in a less cluttered, more minimalistic home.

We eventually tackled our coat closet, our playroom, our attic, our office, the kids’ bedrooms and closets, and even the room intended to be the guest room that we quite aptly referred to as “the upstairs junk room.”

We loaded bags upon bags of the things that were worth donating into the back of our SUV and hauled them to Fayetteville Urban Ministry, and filled our trash bins to the brim multiple times with anything unusable. And I’m proud to say I even made a few bucks selling some things to folks on social media (which may be why my husband tagged me in a post of a photo of a man shivering in the cold outside his truck with the caption, “Me risking my life to meet a complete stranger in the Walmart parking lot to hand over the 20-year-old Crock-Pot my wife sold for $2 on Facebook Marketplace”).

And while it generally felt wonderful to rid our home of so much unused excess, there were a select few things that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to part with.

A plastic bin of my daughter’s newborn onesies, and another of my son’s Little League soccer jerseys. A cardboard box of my childhood birthday cards, Valentine’s, and letters to summer camp written to me by my parents. Plastic ABCs & 123s divided plates that belonged to my husband when he was a little boy. And an antique wooden bed frame my mom used as a child and then passed along to me when I outgrew my crib.

I slept in that bed until I graduated college and got married. We have absolutely no place for that bed in our home, and I’ve taken it out of storage during two different purges, and eventually put it right back. That old bed frame in its corner of the attic is a tangible reminder of my mom, who died 20 years ago.

You see, some things are worth hanging onto, even if just for memory’s sake.

Read CityView magazine’s “New Year New You” January 2025 e-edition here.