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Is this you? There’s a blender in your cabinet you have not used in four years. You don’t like it. The lid doesn’t seal right, it’s loud enough to wake the neighbors, and it is a chore to clean. You keep it anyway. Why? Because getting rid of it feels worse than keeping it.
This is the guilt cycle, and almost everyone is living inside one without realizing it.
It usually starts with an object that came with some kind of weight. Maybe it was a gift from someone who meant well, something expensive you bought and never really used, or something inherited from a person you loved. The object itself might be fine, or it might be something you actively dislike every time you see it; it does not matter. Getting rid of it feels like a statement you’re not ready to make. Therefore, it stays.
Now, here is where the cycle kicks in. Every time you see the thing, you feel a little something — a flicker of guilt, a small reminder that you spent money on it, or that your aunt gave it to you, or that you told yourself you would use it someday. That feeling is not big enough to make you deal with it, but it’s just big enough to make you look away. As a result, you avoid it, and it stays.
The cruel part is that keeping the thing does not actually resolve the guilt. It just reschedules it. You’re not sparing your aunt’s feelings; she probably doesn’t think about that serving dish at all. You’re not honoring the money you spent. That money is gone whether the thing is in your home or not. You’re just paying a small emotional toll every single time you open that cabinet, calling it loyalty.
A few things that tend to be true about this include:
- The guilt is almost never about the object. It’s about a relationship, a decision, a version of yourself you feel like you are abandoning.
- People who gave you things generally want you to be happy, not be haunted by a bread maker.
- “But it was expensive” is your brain trying to undo a past decision by making a present one worse.
- The relief people feel after finally letting something go is almost always bigger than they expected.
None of this means that you should throw out everything that makes you feel conflicted. Some things are worth keeping even if they’re hard to come to terms with. However, there is a difference between keeping something because it genuinely matters to you and keeping something because you do not want to feel the two seconds of discomfort it would take to put it in a donation box.
The blender is not a tribute to anyone. It’s just a blender. Besides, somewhere out there is a person who would actually use it.
Photo: Pixabay