There’s this fitted sheet in our linen collection that just doesn’t work right. It seems fine. It fits when you put it on, and then, in the middle of the night, instigated by who knows what, the corners snap up. My husband and I fall asleep in our normal, cozy bed, and wake up tangled in loose sheet with nothing but a scratchy mattress pad below us. It’s the worst.
To make matters worse (yes, there is more to this story), we can never remember which fitted sheet does this to us. We have four or five sheet sets, and they’re all various shades of blue, green and teal. So it’s always a surprise. When we wake up that random morning, all groggy and itchy and tangled and confused, we’re like, “Whelp. It’s this one. This is the horrible sheet.”
This has been going on for more than a year. I don’t know why we’ve been putting up with it. You can’t just throw away a sheet, right? It’s kind of newish. What a waste.
In a seemingly unrelated line of reasoning, I’ve been thinking about all of my aspirations for this year, and it occurred to me that the only way to properly add something new to your life without becoming overwhelmed is to cut something else out. How can I expect to spend more time being active if I’m spending the same amount of time sitting at my desk? How can I consume more and better content if I’m going through the same route every day?
So a friend of mine tweeted this morning that he had finally unfollowed some annoying people on Facebook. My reaction was, naturally, “Yes! I am going to throw away that sheet! Because I don’t have time for that crazy! I have to make time for other stuff!”
So I tossed it. Or, rather, I put it in a pile of clothes I’ve been meaning to donate to Goodwill. Maybe it’ll fit someone else’s bed better.
The point is, we spend a lot of unnoticed time on things that don’t add any value to our lives. Whether it’s an annoying sheet, obnoxious social media connections or entire television shows, daily habits or time-sucking events, there’s nothing more satisfying than just getting rid of them. Gone. Done-zos. Over. Make room for something better. It’s the only way there will ever be time for anything better to happen.
Natalie Burg 