Declutter(ing)

It is the end of 2025, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m arriving somewhere. I’m excited to be done with the third semester of my MBA, but even more than that, I’m excited for December. December comes with winter — a kind of cold that forces you to stay indoors, which works for me because I never really go anywhere to begin with. But it also gives me time to sit still and sort through the year.

I was supposed to travel to Malawi, but I chose not to. I needed time to reset after the year that has been — and what a year it has been. The year has taken me through airports, classrooms, meetings, and across a couple of continents. And my house, in its own quiet way, is reflecting all of it back to me.

By the end of the year, my house always becomes a mirror: bags, books, clothes, gifts, ambitions, unfinished thoughts, half-packed dreams. It looks like a mess, but the mess is bigger than the house — it’s a reflection of the life that has been lived inside and outside these walls.

So I’m actually excited to get six weeks to reset and ask myself what is important, what needs to stay, and what needs to go.

I’m also at a unique moment in my life. In February, I finish my studies, which means I might have the chance to move again and start over. And I’m thinking about all of it differently than I did when I was in New York. This time, I want to pack better. I want to sort this life out better.

The next few months will look like me slowly putting things on Facebook Marketplace, letting go of the life I’ve had here, bit by bit. And as I sort through everything, I can feel myself sorting through the past year too.

The Nthanda who started the MBA.
The Nthanda who finished her UN mission in New York.
The one who flew back to Malawi.
The one who realised she needed to pivot her business and came to Michigan State.
The one who discovered the greenhouses at MSU and wandered — almost accidentally — into agriculture.
The one who ended up in Redmond at Xbox, still a shock to the 2021 version of me.
The one who will return to Mangochi in February to help break ground for a farm that didn’t even exist in my imagination two years ago.

All these women have lived in this house, leaving traces of themselves everywhere — and none of them paused long enough to clean up after themselves.

So now I’m standing here, noticing what a year looks like when you’ve been too busy living it to take care of it. My dining table still has the flowers from San Francisco — the ones Alvaro bought for me. They’re drying in the vase because they meant something the day I received them, and then life pushed me somewhere else before I could decide what to do with them.

There are studio lights in my office — sometimes on, sometimes off. Books everywhere — some for school, some for the life that has unfolded. Suitcases still half-packed from the United Nations General Assembly. Clothes draped over chairs the way ideas sometimes drape themselves over my thoughts — intentional in the moment, then forgotten.

I don’t look at any of it as mess.
It’s full — full of growth, movement, transition.
It’s not messy.
It’s a structured mess.
A map of the year that has been.

And as I’ve been walking around this house, touching the edges of things I barely remember putting down, I’m realising something very simple: this is not mess. This is evidence. Evidence of a year that refused to slow down for me. Evidence of transition, ambition, movement, grief, growth, discovery. Evidence of becoming.

So December is not about “cleaning.”
It’s about honouring who I’ve been — and preparing space for who I’m becoming.

And because I know I’m not the only one who arrives at the end of the year feeling like their life has been living faster than they could sort it, I want to share how I declutter, in case it helps someone else make sense of their own December.

Not in a rigid step-by-step way.
Just the truths I’ve learned as I move through each room, each object, each version of myself.

Begin where the house is speaking the loudest.

There is always one corner that holds the heaviest story.
For me, it’s the central area of my living room that still has half packed boxes.
For you, it might be a desk, a suitcase, a drawer that hasn’t opened in months.

Start there.
Not everywhere — just there.
Every home has one door that, when opened, lets the rest breathe.

Let each object tell on you.

I like to ask myself,
“Why is this still here? What part of me kept it?”

Sometimes the answer is sentimental.
Sometimes it’s procrastination.
Sometimes it’s a fear of letting go of who I used to be.

Decluttering is not about the object —
it’s about the version of yourself that placed it there.

Don’t force decisions. Invite them.

When you move gently, things separate themselves.
There are items that immediately say:
“I’m coming with you.”
And others that say:
“I belong to a chapter that has closed.”

Let them speak.
Objects hold memory, but they don’t all hold meaning.

Keep what aligns with the woman you’re becoming.

This is the rule I’ve been using as I sort through my life.

If it belongs to the future I am stepping into — it stays.
If it belongs to the past I have honoured long enough — it goes.

It’s astonishing how much clarity appears when you make decisions from the version of yourself you are growing toward, not the version you have outgrown.

Give things away as an act of generosity, not loss.

I’ve reached a point where I’m placing items on Facebook Marketplace not from a place of “I don’t want this anymore,” but from a place of
“This deserves a new life with someone who needs it.”

Everything I let go of frees emotional space I didn’t know I was holding.

Create emptiness on purpose.

Most people declutter until a room feels “just right.”
I’ve learned to stop earlier — to leave space.
Space for the next phase.
Space for the next city.
Space for the next farm.
Space for the next version of myself that February will introduce me to.

Space is not absence.
Space is preparation.

Remember: your home is your timeline.

Every object is a timestamp.
The clothes you wore to a UN mission.
The books you studied from at midnight.
The flowers someone bought you in a city that changed you.
The outfits you haven’t worn since a version of you last felt joy or courage or soft.

Decluttering is choosing the story you want to keep telling.

Decluttering is not deleting. It is editing.

I’ve come to believe that homes are manuscripts.
They collect your drafts.
Your edits.
Your rewrites.
Your abandoned chapters.
Your surprises.
Your faith.

At the end of every year, you must sit with the pages scattered across the floor and decide what the next book will be.

For me, this December is just that — the long exhale between endings and beginnings.
A season to collect myself.
A season to honour the women I have been.
A season to clear room for the one I am becoming.

Because sometimes, to move into your next chapter, you don’t need to start over.
You just need to clean the home.